


warzone

by magpirate



Series: what remains when the war is won? [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Depression, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Mentions of Suicide, Pining, Suicidal Thoughts, Unwanted Pregnancy, Very Dark Fic, always-a-girl steve, canon character death, discussions of abortion, foreshadowing up the wazoo, nat and stella are really only a thing if you tilt your head and squint, sex in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:48:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2749982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpirate/pseuds/magpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I- I do know who the father is, yes." Does she ever.</p><p>"And is this information you want to share?"</p><p>Another moment of hesitation. Saying it would be an admittance. That there is a child. That the child is his. That there may as well be a graveyard being overgrown with flowers in her womb, that her flesh may as well be crawling with maggots and lilies alike.</p><p>"James Buchanan Barnes." The words slide past Stella's lips like she'd drooled them out. "He was- He was one of the Howling Commandos, we all called him Bucky. He was my-- My. My." The words repeat, and she chooses to shut her mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on this for a while and quite seriously wanted to put up something to show for it. this is a fic idea that i've had for ages and wanted to put to paper, so here we are. you may find [my tumblr here](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/) for more. enjoy!!

SHIELD is good at many things, but hospitality is not one of them.

Stella Rogers sits against a wall, listening to the steady hum of florescent lighting as bile burns her throat, the scents of antiseptic and something worse she chooses not to identify invading her nostrils as if that were the stench's sole purpose. Her eyes are closed against the harsh artificial light, her hands resting on her stomach, her head tilted back against the cool tile. The woman's blonde hair is pulled over her shoulder, flyaway strands tickling her cheek as the rest of it hangs in a lazy ponytail. Outside she hears the sounds of squeaky wheels rushing down the hallway, carrying a corpse or a patient or neither, and her blue eyes open to fix themselves on a suspicious stain that decorates the floor in the corner near the doctor's currently empty desk.

Hospitals are not meant to feel like prisons, but the longer she sits here, the more this one does.

The clock above her head speaks up over the vanishing creak of the old wheels, a steady tick tock as the seconds march past. The chair she sits on is stiff, but preferable to the elevated bed just off center in the room, one armed with restraints and leg rests that can be added and removed as necessary. Somehow sitting there for what was meant to be a simple conversation seemed to be too much, as if it was some kind of surrender. The soldier seconds continue on above her, and Stella unconsciously counts each one with the steady tick tocking of the clock. She reminds herself that the door is unlocked. She reminds herself that if she chose to ignore this appointment, she could simply stand up, walk out, take her motorcycle keys out of her pocket, and return to Avengers Tower without this damn thing lurking over her shoulders.

Thoughtlessly, strong fingers slip into the pocket of her pants to finger the keys that sit there, a reminder of freedom that is mere footsteps away if this anxiety grows to be too much.

Two months free of ice, and somehow she still can't stand the color white.

"Relax." An easygoing voice says to her side. Stella does not look up, does not move, simply keeps her hands in her lap. "You're drivin' yourself up a wall for nothin', Stells, you're fine." He says it soothingly, gently, his hand resting on her shoulder. Her blue eyes return to the strange stain on the floor, trying to identify it. Blood, wine, dirt. A forgotten smudge of mustard, ketchup.

"Yeah, well, I don't get sick that often, Buck." The hand on her shoulder holds no weight, missing the firmness and strength she so damn desperately wants to cling to. But his voice carries on well enough, and Bucky's response is an amused laugh as his fingers lift to comb a few stray blonde strands back behind her ear.

"Since when?" His tone is teasing. "I seem to remember a horrible winter once where you were on your deathbed with pneumonia, and the spring in the year before where you were sneezing so often you couldn't say a word."

"I seem to recall you sleeping through that winter and laughing at me through that spring." Still she doesn't look up, but his presence eases the discomfort in her chest. The knot begins to unravel as the soldier seconds tick by above her head. Bucky's fingers linger on her cheek for a moment.

"Following you night and day's tough work, Stella Rogers." He murmurs, his tone loving, and Stella opens her mouth to reply before the heavy door finally creaks open to reveal a kindly looking woman in a white coat. The supersoldier snaps her mouth shut, stands to greet the woman with an outstretched hand.

"Miss Rogers," She says, and Stella takes note of the wrinkles around her eyes. "I'm Doctor Eriksen, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's mine." Stella responds smoothly, and Eriksen gestures for her to sit. The blonde does as she's told, putting her hands back in her lap after crossing one leg over the other. The older woman draws a tablet closer to her, tapping in a few codes and letters that Stella knows she could repeat back perfectly if she had to, and no doubt bringing up medical records that haven't changed in almost seventy years, paired with the picture of a much smaller woman.

"Doctor Banner told me he thought you'd do better with a SHIELD medic." Eriksen says, not looking up as she speaks. "He referred you here, yes?"

Evidently the woman does not truly want a reply, because she immediately begins talking over whatever it was Stella intended to say.

"We've updated your medical records since after you woke," Eriksen continues, and Stella immediately decides she dislikes this woman. "Luckily, there seems to be no serious change. However, with the symptoms you've been reporting- nausea, mood swings and the like- we believe it may be wise to do a blood test, if you would consent to it."

There is a momentary lull in the conversation, and it isn't until Eriksen raises her brows that Stella realizes she wants an answer now. The Captain fixes her eyes on a streak of grey in the old woman's brown hair, brushing her fingers through her ponytail for a moment, then gives a noncommittal shrug.

"It's about my health, isn't it? Wouldn't want me getting sick again." Stella's response is polite, curt, and anything but interested. Behind her, Bucky gives an amused little chuckle, his fingers still ghosting over her cheek, stroking her soft skin the way a man would touch his particularly favored dog.

"No we would not, Miss Rogers." Eriksen says, not unkindly.

"Captain." Stella corrects her, distantly and clearly not listening as she extends an arm to reveal the vein in her elbow.

"Captain." The doctor repeats after a moment's pause, and Stella's blue eyes flicker to the face of the older woman in front of her. The wrinkles near her eyes and on her forehead have become deeper, more pronounced. When she picks up the needle to slide it into the well-medically-used vein, she jabs a bit harder than is necessary, and Stella takes a quiet moment to savor the dislike hovering in the room with the antiseptic and the unknown stain.

"You're not doing very well, Stella." Bucky says from his position beside her, concern from his voice now creeping into her ears like a worm. "You're supposed to be making friends, remember? Getting with the times." Again his fingers ghost over her cheek, and Stella stares down at the vial that slowly turns richly, deeply, beautifully red with her lifeblood, and a slow sigh slips past the Captain's lips. Still, the woman makes no effort to apologize to the older doctor, nor makes any point to say anything else. Eriksen places a cotton swab on the spot she'd drawn blood from, and does her best to feign surprise when the small wound has healed before she can put a bandage over it.

"We should have the results for you in about a day." The doctor says, standing up with the tablet and the vial clutched in her hands as if she'd collected precious metals from her veins instead of blood that's been spilled countless times before.

"The ever collective 'we'." Bucky murmurs, and Stella manages to stifle her snort until the doctor has shut the door. The Captain digs her keys out of her pocket, clutches to them tight enough to feel a sharp tip dig into her palm, and stands up. She stalks her way towards the door with her shoulders slumped forward, her posture hostile, distrustful. There are no footsteps behind her as she approaches her bike, no hands on her waist as the machine roars to life, no kiss on the back of her neck as she goes far faster than she should ever be allowed to outside of a warzone.

  
___________________________________________________________

 

The tower is dark above her as she approaches it, looming like some great sentinel over the city, the A emblazoned on the side gleaming in the shadows. The eye of a cyclops, forever watching over the citizens who need it, forever ready for whatever threat may come. Stella feels a fresh wave of nausea rush over her as she crosses the threshold, glad to hear Jarvis' soft welcome as he locks the door behind her. She's the last one home because she'd chosen the late night appointment, wanting to be discreet. She didn't want to answer Tony's antagonizing questions, didn't want to face Bruce's concern or Natasha's measured, careful voice. They are her friends, she reminds herself. She loves them, she truly does, and yet somehow she finds herself struggling to enjoy time with them. It doesn't seem right. It puts her back, far away in another time, around a snowy campfire, around a warm table with a boisterous song roaring away in her ears, and somehow staying too long is painful.

She approaches the elevator, stiff-backed despite the bile that rises in her throat. Steady, despite wanting nothing more than to collapse and curl up into a ball, perhaps let someone find her and carry her up to her floor. Stella jabs the button to her floor number a bit harder than she intended to, watching it light up as the button hangs awkwardly to the side to inform her quite pathetically that she'd gone and cracked it. The Captain wraps both hands around one of the bars protruding from the wall, feeling her nausea increase and swallowing down a burning sensation that lingers on the back of her tongue.

The doors just slide open and she manages to get past it quick enough to hurry to her kitchen, double over the sink, and retch the half-digested remains of whatever dinner she'd managed to choke down before her unpleasant doctor's appointment. A hand meanders through her hair, sliding down her back to rub in slow, steady circles.

"Easy there, Stells, easy." Bucky whispers against her ear, the weight of his hand making her skin tingle unpleasantly. Her head swims and her mouth quickly begins to feel like carrion, and she turns the sink on nearly full to let the cool water wash away the disgusting concoction her stomach had to offer. "Take a drink, Stella. Wash out your mouth and get to bed."

"I wish you'd stop talking to me." Stella says sourly, cupping her hands beneath the stream of water to gulp down the cold liquid without even bothering to take a cup from the cabinet nearby. She turns to look at him now, to see him with one arm held awkwardly, his blue coat unbuttoned, his hair disheveled. His rifle hangs over his right shoulder, the butt of it just against the back of his head. His green eyes look tired and glassy, distant, far away and sometimes frightened. "I wish you'd stop."

Bucky's pale lips curl into something of a smile.

"No, you don't." He says, gently, and doesn't even look hurt when she simply turns to retch again. The weight of his hand returns on her lower back, and migrates up to the skin of her neck as she begins to weep, heavy sobs shaking her body as she chokes on bile and gulps down water to try and make it stop. Eventually, the water wins, and when the wretched taste leaves her mouth he's gone as well, the last of her ruined supper sinking down the drain as she turns her back.

Clothes are left in a trail heading towards her bedroom, article after article shed as she passes the room stuffed with canvases, the dusty guest room that waits for companionship that will likely never come, the tiny hallway bathroom painted in a cheery yellow that makes her want to cover it in a color that'll make her eyes not want to jump right out of her head.

Stella sinks into bed with all her clothing abandoned, naked and ill and trembling, staring at the darkness of her bedroom in silence as she pulls the heavy blankets around her and clutches onto them tightly. The softness of the fabric is too much, and she feels hot tears seeping down into her pillow as she again aches for the scratchy blankets in her Brooklyn apartment, the creaky bed and groaning wood, the heavy and hard mattress, and the arms of the boy she loved so dearly. His calloused hands, his scratchy jaw, his curved lips, his soft hair. The way he held her, the way he whispered to her when she couldn't sleep, the way his body encircled hers. The way he gave her promises.There is a gun in her bedside table.

___________________________________________________________

 

She wakes as the sun is creeping it's way through her curtains, a light laying itself directly over her eyes, and Stella lies very still, orienting herself against the soft blankets and the mattress that has decided to adjust to her body shape. It's difficult to open her eyes, both against the morning light and the result of having cried so heavily the night before. The blanket sags around her bare body as she sits up, lifting one hand to rub the sleep and grime from her eyes. Stretching slowly, she focuses on the thirst that coats her throat quite aggressively, and the stiffness in her limbs.

The sound of something sizzling in a pan reaches her ears as she's finally sliding out of bed, and Stella glances towards her bedroom door. It was open when she'd gone to sleep and yet is shut tightly now, and the clothes she'd abandoned the night before are folded neatly on the chair beside the window. Her brows furrow in slight confusion as a delicious fragrance reaches her-- breakfast.

The blonde goes about dressing herself properly in the same clothes she'd come home in last night, since they don't really look any worse for wear and she doesn't entirely intend to leave the house until she gets a call from the doctor she's started to think she hadn't really been very nice to. She pulls her pants up properly, takes a note that they're feeling a bit more snug around the hips than she's sure she likes, then pulls her hair out of the ponytail it was in to comb her fingers through it and let it fall down her back. It's no doubt one of the other Avengers in her kitchen, having no doubt somehow found out about her late return, even if she'd kept the doctor's visit quiet from anyone other than Bruce.

Stella comes out of her bedroom much more composed than she'd entered it the night before, still wiping the grime and gunk from her eyes and nose on the sleeve of the blue jacket to make herself a bit more presentable for whoever had set up shop in her kitchen. When she does finally get there, she's greeted with an almost amused looking redhead.

"Rough night last night, Stella?" Natasha says without looking up from the skillet where shredded potatoes sizzle away beside no less than four sausages.

"You could say that." Stella responds, relaxing quickly. Nat was a friend; Nat was something more than a friend. "I didn't realize I got home so late 'til Jarvis locked the door behind me."

"He told me about that." Natasha expertly flips the cooking hashbrowns, revealing a perfectly browned crust on the bottom. Between the scents and just how pretty that food happens to look, the Captain begins to realize that even after being terribly sick last night she's found herself ridiculously hungry. Her stomach growls as she sits down at the tiny circular table, and Tasha continues to speak. "I heard the lock go off, thought I'd ask about it."

The potatoes slide onto the largest plate Stella owns, the sausages follow, and Natasha gets to work on cracking three eggs into the well-oiled skillet.

"You'd have to have been in the lobby to hear the lock, Tasha." Stella says, watching slender fingers crack the eggs all at once in her hand, yolks and whites sliding onto the skillet with a soft hiss as they begin to cook. "Unless you've developed super-hearing all of a sudden?"

"Who says I haven't?" Tasha looks over her shoulder to give Stella a mischevious smirk, then returns her attention to the stove. The redhead steps away only a moment to put two pieces of toast in a very new and very untouched toaster, then returns to hovering over the eggs. "Why were you out so late, Cap? Hot date?"

Stella gives a laugh and shakes her head, crossing her arms on the table and leaning forward slightly. Natasha was a friend. Natasha was more than a friend.

"Nah. Just some appointments running late."

"What kind of appointments?"

The Captain hesitates then, and the Widow takes a second to look at her as she slides the eggs and toast onto the plate with the potatoes and sausage. She picks up on the obvious; that the other woman is not eager to discuss it, and Natasha drops it as she picks a fork out of the cup holding cutlery and slides it onto the plate. She sets the loaded breakfast down in front of Stella, then sits down opposite her.

"You don't have to tell me, Stella, but you do have to eat the absolutely wonderful breakfast I've made you." Nat drawls, tapping painted red nails on the table. Stella makes an exaggerated groaning noise that pulls a laugh from Natasha as she proceeds to tuck into the pile of food. She knows that Nat knows she's been sick, knows that Nat knows it's something more serious than Stella would like. Still, Tasha has proven herself an excellent cook, and she doesn't bother to interrupt while Stella devours what she's prepared.

"You busy tonight?" Nat questions, and Stella looks up then, chewing slowly on a particularly crunchy piece of potato.

"Don't think so. Why?" Stella answers a bit carefully, almost uncertainly. She feels Bucky behind her quickly again, his fingertips on her cheek, tucking loose hair behind her ear. He doesn't speak, though she can hear the rustling of his coat and the motion of his rifle against his body.

"Figured it might be nice to go somewhere together. We haven't done anything since we went shopping, and that was a few weeks ago." The redhead speaks casually, and Stella watches as red-painted nails run through fiery hair. "You look like you need it."

"That bad, huh?" The ghost of a smile crosses the Captain's face. Bucky's fingers retract.

"We don't have to do anything special. Hell, kid, we could just sit in and watch a movie if you wanted." Nat continues, and Stella's realized what this is. Natasha is worried about her. Nat had been the one to come in and shut the door, fold the clothes. Perhaps found the remains of bile and a hastily scarfed down dinner in the sink, and was probably the one to open the curtains. It strikes her that Natasha has been watching out for her, and Stella feels a bit of an ache in her chest. Don't do that, she thinks. That's a dangerous job.

"You're the only job worth putting effort into." Bucky murmurs against her ear. His breath feels cold, his hand wandering down her back.

"I wouldn't mind that." Stella says, remembering what the doctor had said. Blood tests should return in about a day. That would be a phonecall she wouldn't want to sit through alone, and having Natasha nearby would be preferable. Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend. More than a friend. She feels Bucky bristle behind her, a sensation of jealousy, and Stella pushes it away. "It'd be nice to sit in and have a movie, though. I'm not really feeling up to getting out of the house."

"Then I'm picking out the movies," is Natasha's only response, and Stella cracks another smile as she sops up the remains of a broken egg yolk with the last piece of toast.

___________________________________________________________

It's somewhere through the third movie (a romantic comedy that Natasha claimed was her absolute favorite, as she'd claimed the previous action film was her absolute favorite) when the phone rings, and Jarvis does them the kindness of pausing the film when Stella moves up to answer it. The phone is situated near the kitchen counter, hanging off the wall. It's one that she could walk around with just fine, if she wanted, but the Captain had always chosen to linger near the counter. Gave her something to lean on.

"Hello, Captain Rogers, this is Doctor Eriksen." A familiar voice speaks on the other end of the line, and Stella feels her pleasant mood sinking even while she still listens to Natasha picking at the remains of popcorn in a bowl that had been far too big. "We've gotten the results of your blood test back, and I would quite feel better if you came in to our office to discuss this--"

"I'm a little busy now." Stella keeps her voice curt. "Can you just give it to me? Or if you're that nervous, just send it to Bruce, I'll pick it up downstairs." She doesn't mean to sound so impolite. What has gotten into her recently? The line remains silent for longer than Stella would like, and she clenches her jaw, knowing that Eriksen undoubtedly has plenty of other people in on whatever this may be. Captain America is ill, it's something worth talking about to everyone. Anger bubbles away in the pit of her stomach, hot and burning.

"The results were very odd." Eriksen says carefully, as if she's expecting Stella to lash out or hang up. "We found a particular hormone that shouldn't quite be there, as we're aware you haven't been sexually active since you were woken--"

"What?" Stella is caught off guard. "What does that have to do with anything?" Hostility in her voice is replaced by bewilderment.

"As it is, Captain Rogers, you are-- You have a high level of a hormone in your blood that is only visible in that of pregnant mothers. This isn't quite how I would have liked to break the news, but with the symptoms you've been describing and the results of your blood test, I have to inform you that you are pregnant."

Pregnant.

She isn't aware what she's doing until the phone outright shatters in her hand, plastic and wiring digging into her hand until she drops it. Her breathing comes in quick gasps, sharp gulps, and she feels herself moving mechanically. Stella sinks to the ground, breathing heavily and struggling to get any air as her back presses up against the kitchen cabinets. Natasha had undoubtedly heard the shatter and she hears the redhead speaking above her, but nothing comes through. Stella clamps her hands over her ears, her fingers digging into her skull, panting and struggling. Pregnant. Pregnant. It feels like a curse word the more she lingers on it, something dark, something dirty, something horrible.

"Stella."

His voice breaks through her bewilderment, but she doesn't dare uncurl. Natasha sounds distant, overshadowed by the roaring of her heart and the hot tears now flowing unbidden down her cheeks.

"Stella," Bucky says again, and she feels him kneeling beside her. "You're alright, Stella, you're alright." His hands (Natasha's hands?) rest on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her clothing and his arms (not his, Natasha's) wrapping around her to hold her tightly to his chest. Stella's sobs become choking as she clutches onto the cloth beside her, struggling to breathe, struggling to speak, struggling to form even the remains of a comprehensive thought. Pregnant. There is only one person who could have done that to her, and he's dead. Dead. He's been dead for seventy years. His gravestone is worn and weathered and she's been there, she's been there countless times. He is dead.

He is dead, and she is carrying his child.

Something else happens, she supposes. She starts screaming into Natasha's chest, or else her wailing becomes too much. There's the splatter of bile on the newly cleaned kitchen, an apologetic sound from Natasha as she forces Stella to stand, and the sensation of being painfully coddled as the Widow pulls her to her bedroom again, stripping her of clothing soiled with vomit and wrapping her in a robe before pushing her down into bed. Something else happens, and she doesn't process it all until it's happened hours ago. The door is locked from the outside, but she could break it if she needed to. Natasha doesn't want her to run away, the way Stella's instincts tell her to. Find her keys. Take the motorcycle. Go. Go, go, go, and never once slow down, no matter what obstacle puts itself in the way.

The room is dark when she begins to register it all again, that it was not Bucky's hands but Natasha's, not Bucky's firm grip but Natasha's, not his voice but hers. Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend. Stella lays where Nat had put her, still and trembling, her mouth tasting of vomit and her head pounding with the force of her tears. Panic, she thinks, something worse.

"You've had a pretty bad day, huh, Stells?" He says above her, and Stella looks up to see Bucky as he again brushes the hair out of her eyes. She feels feverish, his hand cold against heated skin. He doesn't look right, his disheveled hair dotted with snow and his left arm held awkwardly at his side. His rifle is still there over his shoulder, and Stella imagines her tears freezing under his fingers. "Relax, doll, you're alright. I'm right here."

"No, you're not." Her voice comes out strangled, a struggle to speak. Pregnant. Pregnant with his child. He is dead. "You're not here, Bucky, you're dead. You died. I saw it, you died." He doesn't react even as she begins to sob again, heavy and body shaking sobs, his fingertips still meandering over her cheeks. "You're not here." She means to yell it, but it comes out as a whisper. "You've never been here."

"You're right." He responds, and his palm rests against her cheek for a moment. His green eyes are still soft as they look down to her face, tracing over her features before coming to rest on her still flat stomach. Bucky looks at it like it is something to be treasured, to be loved. They wanted children. They'd talked about it, before. Before. Winter. Winter brought such terrible memories.

"Does that rifle of yours work, Buck?" She says it before she can stop herself.

His entire demeanor changes in one swift motion, both his hands pulling away from her body as she steps back and stares her down with the look he only gave her when he knew she was being stubborn, and the rare times when he knew she was wrong.

"Don't you dare, Stella Rogers. Don't you dare." He says it quite harshly, and Stella feels guilt flooding her body. "I didn't protect you just for you to go thinkin' like that without me. I worked hard to make sure you came home, that's all I wanted to do, and I'm not going to let you do anything else." His anger makes him seem like something else, something with darkness in his eyes, something that may not entirely be human. Her breath catches in her throat as she stares at him, watching the awkward way his left arm is held become worse. It looks jagged, grotesque, his skin becoming as white as the snow in his disheveled hair, his eyes so deeply colored they look black.

Stella shuts her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Bucky." She whispers, pathetically, and there's more than she quite understands there to be in that apology. I'm sorry for the train. I'm sorry for the alleyway. I'm sorry for the ring. I'm sorry for the tent. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

"Don't, Stells." He says, and his voice sounds distant. The silence drags on after he speaks, and she opens her eyes. He is gone, gone, gone. Bucky Barnes is a dead man who left his seed in her belly, and now it's gone and blossomed. Stella stares at the spot he had been, pulling the thick blanket over her trembling body and the thin robe that encircles her, not once blinking, not once looking away. The nausea that floods over her again makes her throat burn, but it manifests in her eyes instead, an ache and burn being the only thing that leads to her finally shutting her eyes again.

Yes, there is a gun in her bedside table. But she's living for more than one life, now.

___________________________________________________________

"When did this happen?"

The doctor who stands before her now is a different woman, a woman with soft green eyes and reddish blonde hair pinned back elegantly, freckles spattering her cheeks. The nametag pinned to her chest says her name is Elizabeth, and she is much more patient than the Eriksen woman had been. Stella bites her lip, stares at the straight lines of the E on her nametag, before looking down to the tile. Beside her is Natasha, the redhead's hand thumbing her fingers in silence.

"Before the end of the war." Stella says, finally. "I haven't-- I haven't had any sex with a man since about a week before I put the plane in the ice." Natasha's fingers curl delicately around Stella's, and for some reason the Captain is aware of a wetness on her cheeks. Giving a sharp sniff, she lifts her hands and wipes her eyes. Elizabeth says nothing, giving her the time to recover to continue answering the question.

"That- that I know of, at least," She says a bit awkwardly, and Elizabeth shakes her head.

"No, nobody touched you while you were recovering, my team and I made sure of that." Her tone is kindly, genuinely kind, and Stella has to wonder if she's being kind because she knows how difficult this is for her or simply because it's part of her job description. Elizabeth's voice is vaguely accented, as if she'd come from far away and only just settled in, but the Captain can't put a pin on what it is. "Do you know who the father is?"

The question catches her off guard, and Stella looks right to Natasha beside her. Nat has adjusted her grip by now, her red painted nails sliding between Stella's fingers to be some sort of rock, some sort of support. Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend. It gives the Captain what she needs, and she looks away from the Widow's face.

"I- I do know who the father is, yes." Does she ever.

"And is this information you want to share?"

Another moment of hesitation. Saying it would be an admittance. That there is a child. That the child is his. That there may as well be a graveyard being overgrown with flowers in her womb, that her flesh may as well be crawling with maggots and lilies alike.

"James Buchanan Barnes." The words slide past Stella's lips like she'd drooled them out. "He was- He was one of the Howling Commandos, we all called him Bucky. He was my-- My. My." The words repeat, and she chooses to shut her mouth. Her blue eyes lower from Elizabeth's nametag and down to the woman's shoes. There is a bruise on the doctor's ankle, just visible over her slipons. She isn't wearing any socks. Natasha's hand closes around Stella's once again, a slender finger pressing gently into the back of her palm and rubbing in slow, smooth circles.

"My best friend." She manages, and it comes out as a whisper. Ghostly fingers slide against the skin behind her ear. A shiver moves down her spine. Elizabeth gives a small nod.

"Well, Captain Rogers, this is something none of us are really prepared for." The doctor pulls a stool closer to where Natasha and Stella are sitting. "Your symptoms do suggest a pregnancy, and based on the time that should have passed for your body, a relatively normal one." Elizabeth gives a moment of hesitation, waiting, almost bracing herself for this. The silence ticks on, and Stella begins to hear the motion of the seconds of the clock above their heads, marching on like soldiers in line.

"You don't have to keep this child, Captain Rogers. Nobody is going to force you to carry it, if you don't want to." Her tone is gentle, suggesting kindness, patience, safety. But to Stella, her words sound monstrous. She has already gone and admitted there is a life in her, and now they could remove it? Nat gives a grunt, and Stella has to look to their hands to realize she's holding too tightly. A sharp inhale later and the Captain releases the Widow's hand entirely, pulling her hand away to put it in her lap.

"Not an option." Stella says, steeling herself. A tent in 1945. Early January. What about kids, Stells? You wanna have kids? Oh, Buck, don't you start, this is no time for that.. He fell days later. Days. It feels like such a short time, now. "I don't-- I don't want to end a life that hasn't started yet." It makes her feel guilty, even considering it. That they could cut her open, slide in a few tools, and pull away the little life blooming in the graveyard of her body. "It's-- It's Bucky's kid, I can't do that to him. He loved kids."

The fingers behind her ear that belong to her best friend in the world press gently on the nape of her neck. Elizabeth nods, Natasha's hand moves back to rest over Stella's.

"Then we'll be happy to give you the necessary support." Elizabeth says, with a smile. An English accent, that's what it is, Stella realizes. Her tone is accented in the same way Peggy Carter's was. No wonder the anxiety hasn't faded even with all the kindness. "All things considered, I think it would be wise to keep a very close eye on both your health and the baby's health. For now it seems like the serum has done a good job of protecting it, but as I said, this isn't a situation we've seen before nor is it one we're prepared for."

Stella nods, mechanically. The doctor continues.

"It would be very wise for you to take it easy, as well. Any... Any undue stress on your body could be harmful, both to you and the child." Elizabeth's green eyes rest on Stella's steely blue, and the Captain can almost feel Natasha smirking at her side. But, Stella nods.

"So long as they don't need me on a mission, I'll stay put at the tower." Her response comes in a cool tone of voice, calm and relaxed, but almost testing. Daring. Her anxieties make her spine curve, her body hunched, curled around her stomach. The nausea has become bearable. Natasha's hand is warm in hers.

Elizabeth seems to give a moment of hesitation, but she realizes what that is, too. But she doesn't rise to the challenge. She merely launches into a discussion of appointments, gives Stella a card labeled with two phone numbers (one is for a woman named Yelena, and Elizabeth explains that that's who to call if she doesn't pick up the first time with a shy laugh) and then sends Stella and Natasha both off together.

Natasha Romanoff does not once release her hand.

___________________________________________________________

She feels his mouth on her neck.

His hands on her shoulders, his mouth against her neck. The tent is tiny and he was nearly on top of her to begin with, but now he's moved himself properly, one hand holding her shoulder against the sleeping bag and the rough ground and the other sliding it's way down to her hip. She still wears the uniform and she certainly doesn't want to take it off with the snow roaring outside, but he manages to find the belt that holds her pants up tight and expertly pull it apart with a few fingers. Bucky's mouth moves upwards to nibble on Stella's earlobe, pulling a tiny little laugh from her, and he grins with his lips against her cheek.

"It's cold, Bucky," She whines as he reveals some of her skin. Even loaded down with thick blankets and sleeping bags, the tiny tent warmed by the two bodies pressed together, Russian winter has proven to be damn merciless. The other Commandos are lumped together like this, too, two to a tent at minimum just to provide a little bit of warmth, but Stella has no idea if they're doing anything like what she and Bucky are.

"S'alright, Stells, I won't let you freeze." He says with an amount of amusement in his tone of voice. His lips find hers and he kisses her passionately, lovingly, their hips rolling together even with the multitude of fabrics in the way. Bucky's hand slides down to her knee as he puts himself between her legs, pulling her leg up with a soft huff against her mouth. Stella smiles against his lips, her arms lifting to wrap around his neck, and Bucky laughs, laughs into her moans as he moves his hips against hers, his free hand groping for the tiny bag that they've squirreled away for such occasions. Kids are a risk, after all. Especially in times of war, especially for Captain America.

"Let go, Stella, I gotta find it." Bucky's voice is teasing, and Stella's grin against his lips just grows.

"Nah, Buck, once won't be enough, and it's far too cold for you to be moving these blankets around." She purrs, and she feels rather than hears his groan. "You've already gone and made that promise to me, anyway. There's a ring on my finger, ain't there?"

Her green eyed glory shifts back to look at her, adoration in his features, cheeks flushed pink, eyes glazed with arousal and pleasure. Their lips meet again, he pulls her pants down enough with a sharp tug, and---

The Captain wakes with a start, taking a moment to orient herself. 2012, no longer 1945. The bed beneath her is soft, conforming to her body. There is a soft clicking noise as the air conditioning clicks on again, and Stella shivers some. No snow. It's the middle of summer. She moved into Avengers Tower a month ago. The war is over. Bucky Barnes is a dead man. His child is growing in her belly. The woman sits up slowly to prevent any other sick feelings, very carefully pulling her fingers out from between her thighs. Her fingertips are wet, and shame boils away in her stomach as she moves to slide off of the bed and stand up.

She doesn't want to cry again.

She doesn't want to cry again, as she's been doing off and on in private since she came home from her doctor's appointment and told Natasha she'd meet her for dinner. Too many damn tears, soaking into her clothing and sliding down her cheeks. Her eyes are bloodshot as she turns on the bathroom light, finding herself staring into the mirror. The clock on the nightstand declares that it is 2:37 am, the red lights blinking steadily while the Captain turns on the sink and washes the wetness from her fingers under cold water. She missed dinner with Natasha, and had told Jarvis to shut down access to her floor for anyone else. She'd heard knocks at the elevator door, but it never lasted long, and Stella had been able to ignore every one of them.

She looks up to the mirror again, staring at herself. Her blue eyes are rimmed with a red that looks too deep to be healthy, tear tracks stain her cheeks in the light. She's dressed in her sleep clothes, at least, her tank top and shorts, though the shorts are now a deeper color around the groin from her damn dreams. Stella adjusts the water coming from the tap in the sink, bending over to wash her face. She rubs her eyes, clearing away the mess that coats her nose after so much sniffling and wiping the tears from her cheeks. She's made her decision already. She's going to keep the child, going to do it for him, because it's his. More than that, it's a little life inside her body. A flower blooming in a graveyard. The thought comes again the same way it had in the doctor's office, and as she leans over the sink, Stella gives a wry smile.

She combs her hand through her blonde hair to push it out of her face, tucking loose strands behind her ear and quietly creeping through the darkened room to find the nightstand. Reaching over, Stella turns on the light with a soft click. The lamp illuminates most of the room just fine, but all she wanted was the nightstand. Delicately pulling the drawer open, she picks up the gun, and gives it a long look. Shaking her head, Stella pulls the bullets out of the cartridge, chucks the now empty pistol into the trash can, then moves over to the toilet once again and flushes all three of the bullets that had been in the chamber. Returning to her bedside, the Captain pushes stray papers and old candy wrappers aside to find what she was looking for.

A tiny little box, wrapped in a soft and very old fabric, labeled with a yellowed old paper that says "Belonging to Stella Barnes, 1945."

She undoes the knot with a slow sigh, revealing a tiny wooden box. It takes a bit of effort to pry open, and she stares down at the ring inside of it. Guilt and shame both mix strangely in her chest.

They hadn't known she was married, when she woke up. It had been a condition of becoming Captain America in the public eye; she became the perfect woman, the ideal fighter, and the press wanted her to be desirable. Wear your maiden name, they said, put away the wedding ring, and be someone everyone wants to be with. But then it had escalated. The army didn't want a husband and wife pair so close together. She'd hidden it for him, because she selfishly wanted to keep Bucky at her side. He was her sniper, she'd insist, he was the best shot they've got. It had made them both angry. Bucky had taken a long time to adjust to it, to take his own wedding ring off, but he always held onto it.

It had been in his pocket when he fell from the train, too.

Pinching her fingers together, Stella picks up the tiny golden band. It's thin, fits snugly around her finger, and the diamond still shines even after decades hidden away in darkness. She lays it in the palm of her hand. They called her Rogers when she woke up, and she never had the heart to correct him. They called her Rogers in her military files since 1943, and she never objected. But now, she quite wants to. She wants to fix it, to say that her name is Stella Grace Barnes and has been since 1939, and to perhaps send away the guilt that had come with hiding how dearly she loved her husband.

The ring is cold in her palm.

"Oh, Bucky." She breathes out, and almost expects him to respond. "I'm sorry."

The truth is, she'd waited too long. She'd waited this long because she didn't want to say that she was a widow. To say she was would be an admittance, giving in to everything that had happened. Stella looks towards the window for a moment, closes her eyes, and curls her fingers around the thin golden band.

Silently, she slides it onto her ring finger. She'll deal with what comes next in the morning.

"Jarvis?" She calls into the darkness, and the AI responds immediately.

"Yes, Captain Rogers?"

"Barnes," She corrects, her voice soft. "Fix the security protocol for my floor, please. Natasha Romanoff is authorized for entrance." Her tone becomes the tone she uses to give orders, to lay plans, to lead.

"Of course, Captain. Agent Romanoff will be allowed in next time she comes knocking."

Stella gives him a quiet thank you, then moves to lay down again. She pulls the thick blanket up over her shoulders before she reaches out to turn off the light. The gold flashes in the light as it is extinguished and the image of it burns into the back of her eyelids as she closes her eyes. The mattress begins to cradle her, the blanket warms her shivering body. One hand moves to rest over her abdomen, and the one with the ring rests against her cheek, feeling the cold metal leech heat from her skin while her thumb presses down against the diamond hard enough to hurt.

___________________________________________________________

The team takes it about as well as is expected.

Stella liked to try and get them together weekly to begin with; for a meal, a movie, a game, anything. It was team-building, sort of, it was making friends. It was her forcing herself to immerse herself into what it was like to be part of a team again, even if it did make her so despicably uncomfortable. The news was broken in the hesitant voice of someone trying to avoid a reprimand, something that she hadn't liked when she was a kid and hated hearing coming from her now.

It's explaining whose kid it is where the problem comes in.

The looks range everywhere from sympathetic, to disbelieving, to flat out annoyance. They'll be supportive, though, whether or not they believe her. They're her friends, and she trusts them to at the very least try to believe the best of her.

Tony's look of disbelief and disgust hurts a little more than she expected it to.

___________________________________________________________

It's a few nights later, when Natasha's watching a fashion show on the television and Stella had decided to try and relax, that she begins to notice it properly. She's lying back in the bath, her hair done up to keep it from getting wet, head elevated from the cool porcelain with a thick towel, and trying her very best to take it easy. She wants this child. She wants this child to grow healthy and happy, she wants this child to have a family, even if that family doesn't turn out to be her.

Her blue eyes examine her own body critically, the way one would think about how to perfect a particularly stubborn piece of art.

She knew her body had changed. How could it not? She spent seventy years hidden away by ice, swallowed up by snow and in a cocoon of metal, some kind of creature in the deep waiting for the day someone would come and crack it open and let her free. She had lost no limbs to frostbite, she still counted ten fingers and ten toes. Her eyes were the same shade of blue she always remembered them to be (and yet when she looked in the mirror she couldn't stop thinking about green) and her hair was still the same gold-in-the-sunlight she was familiar with.

But now, it seemed, the change came from the inside. Natasha's fashion show rambles on, muffled by the closed (locked) door and the redhead's groans are audible. The warm water blows steam gently up onto her face, and Stella stares down at her stomach, watching a barely imperceptible bump as if she expects something to come bursting out of it.

"You're beautiful." He says from somewhere near the toilet, and she supposes that's meant to make her feel better.

The Captain lays her head back down and closes her eyes, very delicately resting both hands on her stomach. She can feel it, feel it perfectly. Is it normal, she wonders. Her body had changed so much from the day she married her husband, from the day the war began, from the day she woke up in 2011 and stayed awake. Smooth fingertips trace over where the bump is, feeling the smallest shift in the landscape of her abdomen to tell her that yes, there's a little one in there. A little life, counting on her. Stella finds the top of the little arch, where her stomach now protrudes the furthest despite how small it is, and rests two fingers there.

"I'll keep you safe." She murmurs, aloud, just quietly enough to keep it from being heard by any unwanted party. This feels, to her, to be some manner of intimacy. An intimate moment, between her and the blossoming flower in the graveyard. "I promise. I'll keep you safe."

Her blue eyes flicker open and she looks down to where her fingers rest. A weight still lurks above her, an oppressive heat like thunder when the clouds are still terribly distant, and the sigh that follows slides from her lips easier than she'd like it to be. There is no longer a gun in her bedside table. There is a ring on her finger again. There is a baby growing in her belly. Find the happiness, she thinks. Try to be happy. At least, try.

Stella puts both hands on the sides of the tub and pulls herself up from the pool of hot water. The cold that hits her then is bracing, but it wakes her up, pulls her from her daze. There's work to be done. She has to keep herself healthy. She has to keep herself comfortable, relaxed, healthy, safe. As she's toweling herself off, she considers it, brows furrowed. This child deserves a life. It deserves everything she can give it, and while it's depending on her for everything it's got she cannot let it down.

She realizes, somewhat distantly while she's pulling her panties up over her hips and struggling with the clasp of a bra that still seems a little strange to wear, that it isn't quite right to think of a little life as an 'it'. It's too early to give the child a name, certainly, but now that she's determined to see this through-- she doesn't want to be impersonal.

That's the problem. She's not sure she could give up this child, in the end.

Stella looks down to the tiny curve of her stomach again, harder to see properly from this position. Another low sigh oozes from her mouth.

"I hope you don't look like your daddy, kid." She mutters, pulling her shirt over her head and buttoning her (tighter?) pants. The Captain pulls her damp hair out of her shirt, combs it out properly, and braids it down her back. "His eyes, though." She thinks of the green. Deep and lovely. Her green eyed glory. "I'd like it if you had his eyes." She smiles, perhaps from the ridiculousness of talking to something that certainly can't hear her and daydreaming the way she would if they'd come home in 1945 like they were meant to.

Her thumb finds the diamond on her ring. She presses down, hard enough to hurt.

___________________________________________________________

She doesn't know how she finds herself here, exactly, sitting on the couch with the remains of enough chinese food for seven sitting on the coffee table, her legs tucked up beside her and her head resting on Natasha's shoulder. Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend. Stella's finger drifts over the ring again, fidgeting with the diamond and feeling the cool metal rotate around her skin.

"So," Nat says, breaking the silence that has lasted a good half hour. The movie was shut off a while ago, and the TV screen is blank. Stella tilts her head up to look at her from her comfortable position without sitting up again, and the redhead's lips are curled in the twitch of a smile.

"I was thinking," She begins, "that you've been spending too much time sitting up here alone, what with all your sleeping in your own bedroom and all that. And I don't know about you, but having to take the elevator up here every morning is absolutely killing my knees and my stomach." Natasha gives a theatrical groan, and Stella can't help but give her the twitch of a smile, even though she knows what's coming and certainly doesn't know what her answer would be.

"So, Cap, if you don't mind, I was thinking I'd take control of that guest room of yours. Clean up the dust and turn it into my villanous lair, if you trust me to be across the hall from all your fancy art." She looks to Stella somewhat expectantly, and the blonde feels a tiny laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach.

"I, ah- If you think you should, I guess I- I wouldn't mind?" Stella stammers a bit more than she intended to. "I mean, I have- I have clean sheets, and everything, and you spend a lot of time here anyway, so--"

"Excellent." Nat drawls, clearly catching onto the fact that Stella's struggling and choosing to grab right onto that yes and hold it like it's a bucking bull. "I'll bring what I need to in the morning, then- Don't worry, I'll move it myself. No need for you to exert yourself." Their eyes meet again for a moment, the silence lingers on, and Stella gives Natasha a careful smile.

Her eyes are green, too. The color's lighter.

"I haven't had a roommate in a long time, Nat." She warns somewhat halfheartedly as she moves to sit up properly, picking at a stray spot on her jeans. "For all I know I might sleepwalk."

"Well, Cap, if you do, I'll make sure to tie you down next time." Natasha says it wih a wink, and the blonde feels her cheeks burn for a reason she's not sure she can articulate.

It's a while later, after the food's been put away, when Stella decides to face her guest room. It's not been a real guest room since she moved in, really; Stella treated it like nothing past a storage space. Two rooms had been made into one across the hall to be filled with canvases and paints when she'd admitted to Tony during the renovation that she wanted a place for her art, and this little one just down the hall from her own bedroom had remained dusty and neglected even after the bed and little desk and nighstand had been installed. It was in the wrong place for a window, so the only light source was a lamp beside the bed that was far too bright for the tiny lamp, but did a good job of illuminating the whole of the room.

She feels like the door should creak when it opens, or perhaps come with a puff of dust, but it doesn't. It hangs open easily and stays there while she picks her way through boxes, stepping over some and bumping into others until her fingers grasp the rod of the lamp. Guiding her hand downwards, Stella finds the switch, and the light is turned on properly.

Boxes upon boxes are stacked up against the wall, just close enough to the bed for it to seem a bit dangerous, and file boxes are strewn around the floor. She knows that Natasha probably planned to tackle this mess herself, but the Captain can still stand, damnit, and so long as she still can she'll do the necessary work to make her friends comfortable. At least, as much of it as she can.

She approaches a box closest to the bed, figuring that at the very least she could clear up enough to make a path from the door to the bed and give Nat a decent place to sleep tomorrow night. Stella stops and crouches then, sitting back on her heels as she gets a grip on one of the oldest looking boxes and very gradually stands up. The contents shift, the rattling and crackling of wood and glass, and curiousity gets the better of her as she turns to set it on the bed instead of walking out to stash it in her art room like she'd intended.

A piece of the tape is hanging off from what had previously sealed it, leaving the old cardboard hanging half open in a way that suggests it hadn't ever really been folded properly. The person who sealed it hadn't put quite so much effort into it, she supposes, her fingers running over the still slightly-sticky tape to pull it all the way up. All of her things from that tiny Brooklyn apartment that could be kept had been put into boxes and thrown into SSR storage. Some, she supposed, might've been sold. Maybe somewhere along the line some museum had come invading into her nylons, looking for something worthy of Captain America, National Hero, Perfect Woman. Stella pulls up the tape, opens up the box, and comes face to face with her parents.

The photograph is old. It's the one that her mother kept by her bedside. Joseph and Sarah, beaming at the camera that their very first American friend owned. Freshly married, fresh off the boat. Her father is a bear of a man, his arm thrown around his whip of a wife, his head tilted back in a laugh and one hand on her shoulder, as if he needed someone to hold onto while he laughed. Sarah is slender beside her husband, her smile much more composed. She has her hand resting over his on her shoulder, and she looks genuinely happy. A woman out of place, with the man she loved enough to follow him to a country where they had nothing and no prospects.

Her mother had loved this picture, Stella thinks, and it's how she'd always pictured her father. Light-haired, laughing. Big enough to hold her in one hand, if he wanted.

A bittersweet smile crawls across the Captain's lips as she sets the picture delicately down on the bed to examine the rest of the contents. Photographs stuck together with plates and cutlery; clearly whoever had done this had been in a hurry. Somewhat carefully, she pulls a collection of old plates (she'd broken more than this in her time, her hands never stopped shaking in Brooklyn) out and sets them on the opposite side of the box than where the photograph was, and when she looks down into the box again she's met with the backside of a photograph, the stand broken, the frame cracked. A tiny frown replaces the tentative smile as she carefully lifts it out and turns it over.

A wedding photo, she realizes in some part of her mind. Her wedding photo.

It'd been Bucky's mother who demanded a photograph, she remembers. The old photo is housed in a broken frame, some of the glass cracked. Someone had treated it carelessly, but the photo is (thankfully) still looking nearly pristine. She and Bucky are in the center, newlyweds framed by the arch of the church doorway. The dress is her mother's and his suit is a hand-me-down from the neighbor's. She has flowers braided into her hair (little white ones, she remembers) and a brighter smile than she remembers. The whites are yellower than they used to be, and she supposes that's simply because of the age of the photo. They'd been married seven years before he fell, after all.

His arm is wrapped around her middle, both her hands on his chest, looking towards the camera with a bright smile while she stands on tiptoe to try and press her cheek against his. If she had a veil it's long since gone, and her dress is just barely short enough to show her toes due to the positioning. Her shoes had been abandoned somewhere, and his tie is a little looser than it should be. It's been so very long since she's seen his smile, she thinks to herself as her fingers brush the old glass. What a happy day that was. It had been bittersweet, since her mother had not been there to see her married, but she could remember the joy that left her breathless the first time Bucky kissed her as her husband, the first time he held her as his wife.

"Don't cry again. Not over that." He says, somewhere behind her. "That was a good thing, Stells. It was good. Don't cry."

She tilts her head up, gives a shaky breath, then decides she doesn't want to go through the rest of the boxes. Moving to stand up, she rubs her eyes free of dust, then collects the two photographs. She'll need to buy a new frame for the wedding photo, but the one of her parents is still in perfect condition. Retreating back into her bedroom, she shuts and locks the door behind her, setting both the photographs on her bedside table. Her thumb finds the diamond on her ring, and she presses down.

___________________________________________________________

Natasha moves in a few days later.

She doesn't ask about the plates on the bed, or the boxes left half open and abandoned throughout the room. Stella is incredibly grateful for this.

___________________________________________________________

Winter comes on like a heavy blanket as her pregnancy progresses. New York is soon coated in frost and snow, and Stella takes to keeping her trips outside as short as possible.

Somewhere along the line, someone put her motorcycle in storage and someone else offered to employ a chauffer.

Natasha takes care of the shopping; her closet is soon ridiculously filled with all manner of nice clothing. Maternity wear and otherwise simply appears one day in her closet, in colors and styles that she likes, and Stella decides against telling the other woman that she doesn't want to accept such gifts.

Natasha begins to kiss her on the cheek before bed at night, and it's very hard to hallucinate a dead husband when curling in the arms of someone who cares very deeply.

___________________________________________________________

"I'm worried about you." Nat says, quite suddenly, one evening over a home cooked meal of frozen pizza defrosted in the oven and a salad that seems to be mostly shredded carrots. Stella's plate is full of it nonetheless, the pizza dotted with onions she'd added when she'd realized that she had a craving for that particular taste.

"Worried about me." Stella repeats, not looking up at the redhead. Her stomach is a little more swollen now, enough for any casual observer to know at a glance that she was most definitely pregnant. It's a few months along and she's gotten a clean bill of health at every appointment, but there's still time to go.

"You haven't been out of the apartment in more than a month." Natasha says very flatly, raising her brows pointedly as she looks at the blonde. Stella lifts her eyes then and looks at the Widow properly, thoughtfully, the slightest of frowns curling her features as she feels the other woman's green eyes analyzing her. Not for the first time, the Captain wonders if the way the Widow looks at her is supposed to mean anything.

"It's been getting cold." Stella says, finally, and she doesn't break eyecontact with Natasha. It seems to almost be an unspoken challenge between them. "And it's starting to get difficult to stand up for too long, you know? I'm not enjoying walking around unless I have to." It's a rehearsed lie, one that she's halfway positive that Nat will see right through, because Natasha has always been smarter than Stella quite wants to give her credit for. Not for the first time, she wonders when she's begun paying so much attention to this woman in a way that felt like more than a friend way.

Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend.

Not for the first time, it occurs to herself that she's slipped and slid and fallen face first into the sort of thing she definitely was not ready for.

"Look, Stella, I know about the gun." Natasha says, carefully. Methodically. This time, Stella does look away, fixing her eyes on an opposite wall. Bitter anger bubbles somewhere beneath her heart and above her stomach, away from the swell that announces the child to the world. I got rid of it, she wants to say. I threw it out because I changed my mind. But she can't find the words. Stella purses her lips, says nothing, and chooses to wait. If Natasha is phased by this, it doesn't show in her voice, and the Captain chooses not to look to her face to see if there's any sort of reaction.

"Depression can be a big deal, Cap, especially when pregnant, you'd do good to--"

"You're kidding." Stella cuts her off with a slight look of disgust, looking at Natasha with an expression of nothing past pure bewilderment. "Depression? It's nothing like that, Nat, I was just having a few bad days."

"A few bad days." Nat repeats after her. "A few bad days since after New York, yeah? Is that why you bought a gun?"

"You keep guns in your apartment." She says, pointedly. Nat's expression doesn't change, those green eyes staring her down like she's analyzing her. Not for the first time, it occurs to Stella that she probably is. The Captain's hands slip lower to cover the swell of her stomach almost protectively. The anger that had festered beneath her heart fades away slowly, oozing back to wherever it came from.

"I don't have depression." Stella says, finally making herself look into those green eyes. No backing down. No ounce of submission. Not a chance. "It's just a couple bad days. Or it was. Either way, I got rid of the gun after I saw my doctor last. It's not there anymore. I'm not having bad days. I'm fine." Rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed. She's said this kind of thing countless of times before to her husband. Guilt replaces anger, but she refuses to let it show. Her thumb finds the ring on her hand, and presses down hard on the diamond.

"Fine." Natasha says. Those green eyes do not leave her face, testingly. Finally, the Widow relents, sitting back in her chair. "You still should talk to someone about it, Cap. Whether or not it's real. You haven't shared anything with anyone since you woke up, and--"

"There's nothing to share!" Stella snaps, and anger comes creeping back in. "You all know Captain America, don't you? People have written all sorts of biographies on me, there's tons of so-called fansites on the internet. History books? I'm in most of them, even if it's just a footnote or two. The Smithsonian is opening an exhibit all about me next year, did you know that?" Her fingers press down on the swell of her stomach for a second, before she thinks better of it and returns to pressing down on the diamond, only hard enough to hurt. "I haven't shared anything because there isn't anything to share. Everyone knows everything."

"You and I both know that's not true." Natasha answers in a steady tone of voice. She hasn't so much as flinched, and Stella shuts her eyes. Whether or not Natasha expects anything else from her isn't established as the other woman simply stands up and leaves the room. Stella opens her eyes when the retreating footsteps have finished, looking down to the remains of her supper.

Somewhere behind her, she feels his presence again. Firm hands on her shoulders, one resting just barely against her neck. His fingers rest just against her collarbone, almost like he's seeking something from the skin there.

"You didn't have to be so hostile with her, Stells." Bucky says softly. "She's just trying to help."

Stella scoffs.

"Just like you, huh, Buck? You getting jealous?" The anger she feels is irrational, and she knows that. It certainly shouldn't be directed at him. The weight from his left hand starts to press down more on her shoulder, as if it's grown heavier than his right. "Course you are. You're dead, and here I am living with someone else."

She tilts her head to look up at him and sees dark, sad eyes. Guilt washes over her once again in waves as she watches that green, darker than Natasha's but more familiar than anything else in the world. His hair looks oddly longer to her, but perhaps it's merely a trick of the light.

"I'm sorry." She says, quietly. Bucky shifts forward, as if he's going to kiss her, before he seems to think better.

"You have more than just me to apologize to, Stells." He mutters.

___________________________________________________________

She opens her eyes to her bedroom.

The summer heat is oppressive. The window is open and the thin curtains blow in the light breeze. The bed is stiff beneath her and creaks when she moves to sit up. Bucky stands in the doorway, looking at her somewhat expectantly. His suspenders hang down by his hips, his shirt halfway unbuttoned, his hair damp with sweat and that same lopsided grin on his features.

"Good evening, Stells." He drawls as he steps nearer to her. Stella props herself up and makes a face.

"What time is it, Buck?" She questions, glancing to the window. The sun is setting, she notes. That explains the dim light, though the heat is still absolutely miserable. He must've been working today, since she hadn't seen him for long this morning. He makes a good wage down at the docks, when he does the job right, but there's not much else for a nineteen year old boy to be doing in Brooklyn that isn't more exciting.

"Past supper. Your mama's gonna be home late, I told her I'd come and look after you." The weight of the bed shifts some as he sits down beside her and leans over to kiss her cheek. Stella feels herself blushing. "Had a lengthy nap, apparently. Sleepin' bad again?"

"I always am." She complains. Stella moves enough to lean against him, and Bucky opts to move himself around to position himself in her bed. That's enough of an invitation, and the girl scoots over to curl into his side. She covers her mouth to cough as one of his hands goes through her hair, the other resting on her hip. She's dressed in her nightgown still; hadn't bothered getting dressed due to feeling too unwell to get out of bed.

"It'll get better, Stells." He says softly as he looks her in the eyes, curling a few blonde strands around one of his fingers and thumbing her bony hip. "You just get whatever rest you need. You can get back to workin' later." She laughs when he says that and tilts her head up to kiss him. They move together automatically, her scrawny body pressing against the strength of him as she's done time and time again. This time, though, something's different; his arms wrap around her firmly, holding her close to him, and he only breaks the kiss when she pushes back at him to let him know she needs to breathe.

Stella lifts her eyes to his almost shyly, feeling herself blush deeply as that lazy grin returns to her face.

"How long didya say my mama would be gone for?" She questions, softly, and it takes Bucky a slow moment to realize what she's suggesting.

"Long enough, yeah?" He responds. Their positions shift. She sits on top of him, Bucky taking both of her hips in his strong hands. Stella leans over to kiss him deeply as his hands work their way up her nightgown, and--

  
Her eyes open for real, now, and the cold is piercing after such a vivid sight of summer heat. She lays on her side, compensating for her heavy stomach. Her due date is weeks away, expected to come soon, and even sleeping is difficult now. The dream fades like mist in sunlight and she clings to it almost desperately, seeking the warmth in it and the feeling of anything but loneliness. Nat had left days ago for a mission from Fury, and her absence had made things so much more painful.

Stella sits up gingerly, reaching to turn on her lamp and looking down to the nightstand. Her wedding picture sits there in it's shiny new frame, and as she shifts she feels the wetness between her thighs that such a dream brought her.

That had been their first time, she remembers, a summer evening when she was sixteen and her mother had been working late at the hospital. It hadn't exactly been romantic- she'd had to ask him to stop twice purely so she could catch her breath, and they'd stained the damn sheets bad enough that Bucky had to make up a story so Sarah wouldn't be suspicious or worried, but it was a good memory. A happy memory. Bucky had been so gentle with her, so reverent. He'd brought her pleasure in ways she hadn't even known about and guided her along as he did; and lord above, how she had loved that boy.

She sits back some on the bed, looking down to her stomach. At least now a pregnancy wasn't close to a death sentence, with this new serum-enhanced body. Back then having children had been a crushing impossibility, even after their wedding. Having a child would have hurt her badly, or worse, even if they had been able to conceive in the first place; an unattainable dream, and it had hurt. Both of them had always wanted children, wanted to have home and family more than anything else.

A wry smile crosses Stella's lips. Home and family, that was all. No superheroing, no riches, no fame. All they'd ever wanted was to have their own home somewhere together. They'd come close, she thinks as her eyes rested again on the wedding photo. They'd lived together from the day her mother was buried, married a year afterward. Three years went past, and the draft came.

Sorrow weighs heavily in her heart as she moves to lay down again. Home and family. That's why. Avengers Tower was not home. 2012 was not home. Home was Brooklyn, 1939, lying in the arms of her husband while he says her name like a prayer. Her hand rests on the swell of her stomach as she closes her eyes again.

Home and family, that was all.

___________________________________________________________

Joanna Winifred Barnes is born two weeks later.

Stella lays now in the hospital room beneath the tower, alone for the first time in a grand total of three days. The room is more like a hotel, clearly one intended for lengthier stays- the bathroom is fully equipped with everything necessary, the bed is agonizingly comfortable and covered in pillows for her to prop herself up against at will. There's a TV that sits nicely on an empty dresser, and the only thing that really establishes the fact that this is indeed a hospital room and not a hotel is the call nurse button resting on the nightstand.

She is naked, a blanket thrown across her lap, looking down at the child cradled in her arms. The child in question is a little girl, her eyes wide open and staring up at her mother as she nurses eaglery. The sensation is an odd sort of tug that Stella feels more in her stomach than in her breast, though she can't deny the relief. Joanna's tiny hands are pressed against her body in a way that is every sort of comfort the Captain has ever known wrapped up in one.

The baby's eyes are the same shade of green as her father's. Wispy strands of blonde hair are only really visible on her still-squishy head when the light is right, and the only worry any doctor had had was that perhaps she was just a little too small. That was no concern of her mother's, though.

"Oh, Bucky. She's beautiful." Stella breathes out as she gently pulls the child from her breast. Joanna gives a little noise of displeasure, clearly trying to say she wasn't finished yet, but that little noise is gone in seconds as Stella gathers her up again and pulls her to her chest to hold her close. The baby's head rests on her shoulder, and one wandering hand finds her mother's chin. She smiles lightly as she looks down to Joanna. "I wish you could see her, Buck."

She named the child after her father, and after Bucky's mother. She supposed that was the best way to honor them, after all; She'd considered the name Jamie for the longest time, and the name Margaret, but they simply hadn't felt right. Joanna. The little girl was named Joanna. Stella begins to hum softly, closing her eyes and focusing simply on the way the little girl tries to play with her hair. The child is in constant motion, and has already gained some weight. She is the picture of health, and that was at least one worry taken care of.

"Sir, you can't--" A flustered sounding nurse breaks her from her reverie as the sound of heavy footsteps announces the arrival of someone else. Joanna gives a loud noise of displeasure as Stella adjusts, pulling the blanket around her to hide her nudity before picking up her daughter again.

Nick Fury stands at her bedside, looking somewhere between amazed and amused.

"Congratulations." He says, and Stella furrows her brows.

"Thank you." She answers in a measured tone of voice. Joanna has a little fist in her hair, and the nurse has since opted to go retreat and find a doctor instead of arguing with the Director of SHIELD. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" She hasn't spoken with Fury since New York. He'd offered her a job then, and she'd turned it down. But then, she'd learned about SHIELD recently, and it seemed that they didn't quite like taking no for an answer.

"You remember New York?" He says, taking a seat in the plush loveseat. He sits rigidly, however, as if the cushion were stone.

"As if I could forget an alien invasion." She responds dryly, adjusting her grip on Joanna. The child squirms still, making little noises even as Stella tries to hush her. Are all children so active so soon after birth?

"I hate to interrupt in this sort of situation, Captain, but we could really use your help." He begins to explain. It is February 2013, nearly an entire year since New York, and Stella is truly wondering if he's coming to her now out of need or simply because he's here to bother her. "Someone of your caliber, your skills, we need you on your side. There's still work to be done, soldier."

Stella purses her lips as he speaks, adjusting her grip on Joanna again and feeling the blanket around her sag slightly around her shoulders. Blue eyes finally fix themselves on the Director, and Stella adjusts how she's sitting once again as Joanna squirms on her lap. She stays silent, however, watching his face, trying to detect more. She has never been one for espionage; that's one of the biggest reasons she'd avoided SHIELD to begin with. They may have revived her, brought her from an icy tomb back to life, but they-- they were secrets. SHIELD was secrets and lies, she knew. Lies for a good cause- the good of humanity- but lies nonetheless. But then... Peggy Carter had founded SHIELD. Surely that meant more?

"Job's down in DC, yeah?" She breaks the silence, halfway glad that Fury wasn't deciding to be pressuring. She supposes that has something to do with the baby.

"It is. More travel than you're probably prepared for, but we need you." He watches her closely, that same analyzing gaze that Stella's attributed to Natasha plenty of times.

"I can travel sooner than you think, sir." She responds, looking back down to Joanna. "I heal faster and all that." Her fingers run up and down the child's back, as Jo seems to have finally begun to calm down at least a little more. Stella exhales slowly through pursed lips, then nods. "I'll take the job. I've been sitting still for too long, anyway."

"We'll take care of it, then. Thank you, Captain." Fury says, as he stands up. He moves towards the door, then pauses a moment, looking to the woman in the hospital bed and the child cradled in her arms. If he wants to say something else, though, he never does. The door shuts behind him with a soft click, and Stella lays back, listening to the nervous talk of a nurse through the wall.

"Welcome to the world, Joanna." She muses as she rests her head against the pillows, moving some to make sure the child would be comfortable on her chest. "It's an exciting place, if nothing else."

___________________________________________________________

She settles in quickly to DC.

Her apartment is equipped with a second bedroom that will be Joanna's when the girl's grown a bit more, but for now Stella has her set up in a crib in her room. The bed this time is still too soft, still too comfortable. But it doesn't matter all that much to her anymore- she doesn't sleep there often so much as she sleeps in the chair by the window, nursing her daughter or else telling her stories about her daddy, humming lullabies she knows from her mother.

The storm outside is horrible. Rain beats against the window heavily, and despite the fact that it's midday, the apartment is lit by a few lamps and one overhead light in the living room. Joanna, however, seems to be enjoying it. The little girl squeals at every crack of thunder and reaches for her mother, and Stella just chuckles, delicately pulling her fingers away from her hair.

A record player was all she really brought from New York. New clothes, new apartment, new books. The record player is old, from storage. A song that she learned after she woke carries on from inbetween the scratches. Kitty Kallen, 1945. A way to welcome a lover home from a long war.

"What do you think, Jo?" Stella questions as she sits at the kitchen table, humming to the tune. "Think this storm'll last much longer?" The thunder rumbles overhead and Joanna gives another squeal, making her mother give a soft laugh. She leans forward to kiss her daughter's forehead. "Yeah, baby girl, me too."

Her wedding photo is placed upon her nightstand. Bucky smiles at her from the frame every night when she lays her head down to sleep. Joanna has a fascination with her wedding ring, the way the diamond seems to shine even in the dark. She sits and listens to her mother's stories, entranced, and Stella wonders plenty of times if the girl understands more than she lets on.

_Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again, it's been a long, long time._

Stella sits back in her chair then, pulling Jo from her highchair onto her lap.

"Starting over's not so bad, huh?" She says to her, and those bright green eyes look up to her. Stella recognizes that smile, she realizes. The same lopsided grin of her father. "Yeah." Stella says, aloud. Speaking to Joanna is better than speaking to a mere hallucination, isn't it? "Yeah, Jo. We'll do good here. Good work for SHIELD, and we'll make this a good home. Maybe I'll even invite the neighbor over to play with you." She places a kiss on her daughter's fuzzy head, and Joanna makes a happy little noise as the storm continues on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Observe. Plan. Execute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very sorry for the wait!! the interest in this story is kind of amazing, i'm very flattered.  
> we're into winter soldier territory now. hold onto your butts.

It was very early morning in Brooklyn.

The sun wasn't even up yet, just a light in the horizon. Stars still decorated the sky above, and clouds moved past in steady wisps. The moon wasn't anywhere to be seen, but that didn't matter much to Stella. She hadn't come out here to stargaze, or to sit on her own. It was, after all, her wedding day.

She sits on the stoop behind Bucky's parent's house, staring out at the concrete lot they call their backyard. She'd been staying here for a few days now, preparing for a nice wedding at the church down the street that Winifred and George were paying for, with a bit of added cash from the money Sarah had left Stella after she died. Her nineteenth birthday had only passed a few weeks ago, and that had been the very same day Bucky had proposed to her. She smiles at the thought; fireworks going overhead, celebrating Independence Day, and he'd done what he'd always done. Taken her hands, kissed her, and told her the fireworks were just for her. After that, though, he'd done something entirely different- pulled a ring from his pocket and asked her to marry him.

Of course, she'd said yes before he'd gotten the sentence out.

The door behind her opens while she's busy reminiscing about what may have possibly been the very best birthday of her life, and Bucky himself sits down beside her. He looks tired and disheveled, but there's a serene sense of happiness in his features.

"Couldn't sleep?" He asks, gently. She grins, leaning against him and putting her head on his shoulder.

"Nah. Too excited." She replies as he puts a kiss on her forehead. She pauses just a moment to look up at him, her expression becoming slightly mischievous. "Don't ya know it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?" She teases, and it's certainly enough to get him to laugh.

"C'mon, Stells, my mama's had you out of the house and away from me for days. A few minutes won't hurt. Besides, I think they're only worried about us sleeping together, excusin' the fact we've been living together for ages..." He tilts her head with a gentle few fingers to kiss her properly, light and chaste on the mouth, and Stella smiles against his lips.

"I'd sleep better with ya, I think." She muses as she pulls back, still leaning on his shoulder as she looks up to the still-dark sky. "S'always too cold on my own, or too uncomfortable. Hard to get used to, I guess." She hums as he drapes an arm over her shoulders and pulls her that little bit closer to him. The morning is warm, betraying what is sure to be a stiflingly hot day, but she's got no complaints being curled into his side.

"I know whatcha mean." He responds, pressing his lips to her temple. "It's weird, sleeping alone. But hey, tonight, you and I will be right back home in your apartment, and we'll have the whole place to ourselves." She feels rather than sees his smirk. "You and me... That pretty white dress... in the aftermath of the greatest day of my life..."

"Greatest day, huh?" She teases once more. Her heart beats a little faster despite it, and for a moment she feels an odd shortness of breath. Excitement, she reminds herself, breathless excitement. You're getting married today. You're marrying the man you've always loved. "Goodness, and here I thought that would've been the day I actually said yes to you."

"Stella Grace, you said yes to me a full thirteen years after I proposed." Bucky says pointedly, giving her a bit of a look.

"Ah, right. Because you were nine and thought it was a good idea to propose to a six year old. You terrible cur." She prods him in the shoulder and laughs. Her nineteenth birthday was just a few weeks ago. She remembers very vividly how he'd said it right into her ear, and the way the ring had practically shimmered in the light of the fireworks.

Stella tilts her head to kiss him once again. She can feel the scruff on his jaw, stubble growing in that his father will no doubt go after with a straight razor, but she likes it. Bucky's hand lifts to her cheek, the other going to one of her bony hips, and he pulls her that much closer as he takes her breath away. She smiles into it and curls her fingers delicately in his nightshirt, and she sighs-- actually sighs, some lovestruck dame-- when he pulls away. Their foreheads rest together once again, blue eyes staring into green, and Bucky smiles.

Once again, she feels her heart race.

"C'mon, Stells. We got a few hours to kill, and I miss sleepin' with you." He says gently, and she knows what he means. She doesn't object, standing up and brushing off her nightgown, and giving a soft laugh as she takes his hand again. They move inside together as the sun rises above Brooklyn, illuminating the city in a soft layer of orange light.

Stella wakes properly to the sound of Joanna's soft whining from the crib in her bedroom, opening her eyes to the dim lighting. She sits up, still tasting Bucky on her lips, feeling him in her fingertips, and a low and soft sigh eases it's way out of her mouth. A quick glance to the clock tells her it's six am-- good enough, early enough to feed Joanna and still get a run in. The Captain rubs her eyes as she puts her feet on the floor, standing up a moment later to wander over to her daughter's crib.

"You're up early, baby girl..." Stella teases, her voice soft as she leans over to pick the little girl up. Jo gives another little whine and grabs at her mother's hair. The girl was just over a year old, now; it was early April. She'd grown well compared to how small she had been at birth, and Stella and the doctors had attributed that to potential changes thanks to supersoldier genetics. Most of that talk hadn't been worth listening to-- all theorizing about Stella's body, in a way that the woman herself wasn't exactly comfortable to hear. A tug of her messy hair pulls Stella's attention back to her baby, and she gives a little smile as she kisses Jo's forehead.

"Let's get you your breakfast, then." She's settled into a good routine now, after living in DC for nearly a year. Up at a decent hour, Joanna fed and taken to daycare, and then off for a run. Stella Barnes was a creature of habit, if nothing else, and the routine had been a good help once it was established. Jo was doing well, too, which was nothing if not a relief. It was easier to ignore those hours when being miserable reared it's ugly head when she had a child to look after. The morning was the best part. She didn't wake up alone anymore.

Stella sets the child into her high chair and drags over her own seat, producing a spoon and a tiny jar of baby food. Jo was working her way up to solid foods now, but she was less likely to really eat early in the day unless it was the softer sort. The jar opens with a light pop, and Joanna squeals again when Stella pokes at her hand with the colorful red spoon.

She's a bit embarrassed about dreaming about that again, despite how good it made her feel. She considers it while spooning a mix of mashed peas and sweet potato to her daughter, the slightest twitch of a tired smile on her face. Their wedding hadn't been extravagant. She'd married Bucky on a quiet day in August, a year after her mother died and only weeks after her nineteenth birthday. Bucky had bought the rings with money from his jobs and, he'd admitted later, some money that Sarah had given him after making him promise to take care of her. They'd been in that church a few times before, but not quite for the intended purpose. Stella thumbs the ring on her finger with a small smile as she considers it, closing her eyes for a second. Joanna makes a little noise and grabs at the spoon, and it pulls the mother from her thoughtful trance.

"April fourth, Joanna." Stella says, with a light laugh. "Excited to go and play today?" She'll have a mission from Fury, she's pretty sure. It's been a while since he's sent her out on anything, but with the STRIKE team under her command, there's usually not long between missions. She's got time to kill, and she intends to get a run in before the day turns to combat. Jo's daycare is run by SHIELD agents, and it's safer than anywhere else she'd choose to leave the girl.

"Right," Stella hoists Joanna up into her arms, using a napkin to wipe her mouth. "Time to get you dressed, and let's go play." She glances to the notebook on her table, making a note to take that along with her.

___________________________________________________________

Her usual running lap is about three miles long, featuring a good length around the reflecting pool for a bit of extra distance when she happened to be in the mood for it. It gave her time to think while keeping herself active, which was something she'd felt she desperately needed. Thinking while standing still just hadn't been beneficial, after all, and since joining SHIELD properly she felt... better. Somewhat better, rather. A steady job that kept her up and going was a good enough distraction, that was for sure. Her daughter had friends in her daycare at a smaller SHIELD facility a distance away from the Triskelion, she'd stopped fidgeting so much with the ring on her finger, and most of the people around had had the decency to stop calling her Rogers.

Stella keeps a steady pace as she moves, her feet hitting the pavement in a familiar rhythm. She sees him before she hears him, another man on her running trail, and going much slower. This is new, but not entirely unwelcome. A twitch of a smile curls her lips.

"On your left," She says, as she passes him, and she gets a grunt in response. He is dark-skinned and looks amazingly tired for being up before the sun for a run, and by the second time she passes him ("On your left." "Uh huh, got it, on my left.") she can see that he's got a military symbol on his sweatshirt. She puts that away in the back of her mind and keeps going. It made sense that there'd be a lot of military in DC, she supposes, but she hadn't been out and about much besides SHIELD and Joanna's daycare. There's some sort of kinship she feels with this man, and hey, maybe it was time to make some friends.

He hears it when she's approaching behind him, and she can't stop herself from picking her pace up just a little bit more.

"Don't you say it!" He snaps at her, and Stella has to bite her tongue from laughing as she responds with "On your left," and dashes right past him.

"Come on, man!" He groans as he tries to catch up with her, and the Captain very nearly starts whistling. Harmless fun wasn't so bad. Maybe pulling a little more jokes would be a little fun, one of these days.

She finds him again slumped beneath a tree, his sweatshirt soaked through and his breathing heavy and labored. He looks up at her, gives her the textbook definition of a disgruntled look, and Stella grins in response.

"Need a medic?" She says very casually while reaching over to help him up.

"I need a new set of lungs." He groans as he takes her hand. "You just ran, what, thirteen miles in thirty minutes?"

"Guess I got a late start." She shrugs dismissively, taking her hand away when it's clear he's not going to fall over flat.

"Really? You should be ashamed of yourself. Go take another lap." He brushes himself off before looking back up to her. "Did you take it? I assume you just took it." Stella decides, quite quickly, that she likes this man.

"What unit you with?" She questions, gesturing to his sweatshirt.

"Fifty eigth pararescue." He responds, picking another blade of grass off of his sweatshirt. "But now I'm working down at the VA."

"Stella Barnes." She says as a way of introducing herself.

"Kinda figured. Sam Wilson." And now she has a name to a face. Sam looks her over for a second, his expression more curious than anything else. "Must've freaked you out coming home after the whole defrosting thing." He says it very casually, and Stella knows he doesn't mean anything by it, but the sudden tightness in her stomach makes her bite her tongue.

"Takes some getting used to." She responds, becoming closed off without entirely intending to. "Good to meet you, Sam." She'll see him again, she figures, but now feels like the time to be ducking away. She doesn't want to talk about that, doesn't want to mention what the plane felt like, what the ice crusting her eyelashes had been like, what the water--

"It's your bed, right?" He calls after her, and she has to stop and look over her shoulder at the sound of him calling after her. "I was over there, I slept in caves, used rocks for pillows. Now I'm home, and it's like--"

"Like sleeping on a marshmallow." Stella finishes. "Feels like I'm gonna sink right to the floor." She turns to face him now, wondering for a second on if she should or not. He didn't mean anything by mentioning the ice, she tells herself, and if you run away every time someone brings it up, you're not gonna get lucky talking with anyone. "How long?"

"Two tours." He says it with a scratch to the back of his neck. Stella gives a small nod, and Sam adds, "You must miss the good old days."

"Oh, it's not so bad." She starts. Yes, she misses it. She misses home, and her husband. "Food's a lot better, we used to boil everything. No polio's good. Internet, so helpful." She misses her mother, and her firm bed, and the way she wasn't sleeping alone, back in those days. "Been reading that a lot, trying to catch up."

Sam seems to catch on her mood, whether or not he knows what it is. He tilts his head a bit thoughtfully, lifting a hand.

"Marvin Gaye, 1972, Troubleman soundtrack. Everything you missed crammed into one album." He offers her a slight smile afterwards, and Stella nods slightly, picking a tiny notebook out of her back pocket. She'd taken to carrying it around the way she had with her sketchbook during the war.

"I'll put it on the list." She comments a bit distantly, writing Troubleman (soundtrack) at the bottom of the page. The list is getting consistently longer, but it's distractions. And distractions are good. While she's finishing, she feels her phone vibrate in the opposite pocket. There's the mission she was expecting this morning. Stella slides the notebook back into her pocket and pulls out the (SHIELD-issued) phone, giving the screen a cursory glance.

"Duty calls." She says, glancing back to Sam's face for a second.

'Extraction imminent. Meet me at the curb. ;)' It's written in bright letters on a dark screen, and the message declares itself from Natasha Romanoff. The Captain gives a twitch of a smile and glances back to see Nat's dark car slide up to the aforementioned curb, and the window rolls down.

"Hey, can anyone point me to the Smithsonian?" Nat questions quite mockingly, one brow raised and her pale lips twitched into a smile. She's straightened her hair, and it hangs off her head in a thick red curtain. "I'm here to pick up a fossil."

"That's hilarious." Stella grumbles dryly as she approaches the car, and she can almost feel Sam's jaw dropping as she moves to climb into the passenger seat. She rolls down the window to meet Sam's grin with something of a sheepish smile of her own.

"Can't run everywhere." She says, almost a bit embarrassed.

"No you can't." Sam confirms, leaning forward to peer at Natasha.

The Widow chuckles and puts her foot on the accelerator, pulling her way out into traffic.

"He was cute, Cap."

"Don't start, Natasha."

"Still. Cute."

___________________________________________________________

The mission is one that seems odd to her from the get-go. A launch ship, a band of pirates, and a night mission that she's positive is going to result in Joanna being mopey about being left with the neighbor. It's no big deal, she supposes, but it's not the kind of thing she wants to worry about. The Strike Team she's been put in charge of is populated with good men and women, even if Stella is made profoundly uncomfortable by the way she feels Rumlow stare at her every now and again.

Still, some part of her is quite glad to be in her armor again. Her mind slips into somewhere else entirely when she's presented with combat; the routine of observe, plan, execute. Observe- hostage rescue. More hostiles active than make up her Strike. One pirate leader in particular in the bridge who will be her responsibility. Plan- she'll head in first, take out anyone on the deck (nonlethally, as is always her habit; they'll hurt when they wake up, but they won't be in a morgue), Rumlow and a few others will find the hostages, and Natasha will shut down the engines.

Execute.

It's easier than she thought it would be to shut the rest of the world off. She stops thinking about Bucky, she stops thinking about the persistant ache in her chest, and she stops thinking about Natasha's suggestions. ("Too shy, or too scared?" "Too busy.") She stops thinking about Rumlow's leery gaze, stops thinking about becoming Fury's clean-up crew, and all that's left in front of her is the mission. Tunnel vision.

Execute.

It moves smoothly, up until Natasha doesn't report back. Up until the pirate tries to challenge Stella on his own, and she gives him a concussion he'll still be feeling a month from now.

"Well, this is awkward." Natasha's voice rings from across the room, and Stella looks up to see her almost smug little smirk as the Captain picks herself up off the ground. Execute.

"What the hell are you doing?" Her tone is seething, annoyed.

"Backing up the hard-drive." Natasha's leisurely response is infuriating. "It's a good habit to get into."

Stella paces nearer to her, angry and agitated, and looks to the screen. She takes in what is running by quickly on the screen, catching everything from medical records to what she's sure is some kind of launch code, carrying on into names of agents and places of secret bases. The information flies past, but Stella holds onto each and every bit.

"You're saving SHIELD intel." Her tone is not cold, not disappointed, her tone is angry.

"Whatever I can get my hands on." The Widow responds.

"Our mission was to save the hostages!" Stella snaps. This is not how it's meant to go, this is a disruption in the execution, this is a sidetrack they were not supposed to go on. Saving SHIELD intel means less than nothing to her, the only important thing is the twenty four lives currently being led away from the galley. Execute.

"No, that was your mission." Natasha's tone has become a purr as she pulls the hard-drive out of the console, shuts it, and pockets it. "And you've done it beautifully."

Enough, Stella thinks.

Her hand reaches out with a bit more force than she meant to, and she grips onto the Widow's upper arm with a tight grip. Nat will have bruises there later, but Stella gives that no thought. Unyielding blue eyes meet stubborn green, and the two women reach a stalemate.

"You've jeopardized this whole operation." Stella says in a tone that leaves no room for argument- not that that's ever stopped Natasha Romanoff.

"I think that's overstating things." Nat responds, but the noise that follows says otherwise. Stella looks over her shoulder to see Batroc standing again- alright, perhaps she hadn't hit him hard enough- and there's a split second to react.

The Captain hoists the Widow up over her hip immediately and Natasha pulls her pistol out to shoot through the window when the grenade is thrown towards them, and Stella manages to pull her down out of the line of fire of the explosion. Both of them simply sit there for a second, in shock, before Stella clenches her jaw.

"Okay." says the redheaded woman. "That one's on me."

"You're damn right." Stella doesn't even bother to look at her, shutting her eyes and clenching her fists before she stands up. Anger infects her voice, and she can feel Natasha rolling her eyes in response. It occurs to her, not for the first time, that she doesn't think she knows exactly who Natasha Romanoff is.

___________________________________________________________

"You just can't stop yourself from lying, can you?" Alright, so maybe she's a little out of line. But Stella is rapidly beginning to despise this job. Espionage is infuriating. She has a daughter to worry about, and not knowing if her own damn Strike team has their own agenda is not something she wants scratching it's way up and down her spine. She stands in front of Fury's desk with her arms crossed over her chest, her shield on her back. Fury doesn't even do her the favor of turning to look at her.

She truly, deeply, does not like this man.

"I didn't lie." His tone is bored. Anger flares up in her chest again. "Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours." He turns around, finally, eye to eyepatch with her. "I didn't want you doing anything you weren't comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything."

"Those hostages could have died, Nick." She answers him. Her tone keeps cool, her anger hidden behind her even facade, but that sentence alone is enough of a reminder. We're on equal ground, it says. I don't trust you. She wonders, for a moment, if he knows that.

"I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure they didn't." He answers her, looking at her in a way that Stella would name a mildly disappointed father. "It's called compartmentalization. Nobody spills all the secrets because nobody knows them all."

"Except for you." A challenge. She puts her hand down on his desk, and Fury recognizes that.

"You know, you're wrong about me." He says. "I do share. I'm nice like that." He moves out from around his desk and gestures for her to follow. Stella clenches her jaw for just a second, puts her hands on her belt, and does as he asks. They walk in silence out of his office, down the hall, and to the empty elevator. "Insight Bay." Fury says, and Stella raises a brow.

An automated voice answers him with "Captain Barnes does not have clearance for Project Insight." Stella's gaze flickers to Fury's unreadable face.

"Director override. Fury, Nicholas J." He leans back against the bars, and Stella notes that this is perhaps the most relaxed she's ever seen him. A slight frown curls her lips, and she crosses her arms over her chest, looking forward to the opposite wall instead of to the presence of authority standing with her in this cramped space.

"You know," she starts, "they used to play music."

"My grandad operated one of these for forty years." Fury answers, and he sounds almost bemused. The elevator begins to descend. Stella assumes this is going to be a long ride, so she ignores her anger and annoyance in favor of listening. "Grandad worked in a building, got nice tips. He'd walk home every day, he'd say hi, people'd say hi back. Time went on, neighborhood got rougher. He'd say hi, people'd say keep on stepping. Grandad got to clutchin' that lunch bag pretty tight." His eyes look to her, examining her. Analyzing her. Everyone in SHIELD does, and she's learned to keep track of that.

"Did he ever get mugged?" He wants her to ask, she can tell, so she does. Stella keeps her tone casual, quiet.

"Every now and then some punk would ask him, what's in the bag? He'd show 'em. A bunch of crumpled ones, and a loaded .22 magnum." He steps past her to stand beside her as the elevator descends beneath the grounds of the Triskelion, and Stella turns over her shoulder to look at what greets them as Fury finishes his story. "Grandad loved people. He just didn't trust them very much."

The Insight Bay is massive, in every sense of the word. It is occupied by all manner of agents moving this way and that, like ants upon a fortress. Dwarfing everything, the planes and the agents and the consoles are three massive helicarriers. They look loaded down with weapons in a way that Stella would call comical, like a frog loaded down with pistols, if it weren't for the growing horrified tightness developing in her chest. Fury gives her a only cursory glance. Stella keeps her features unreadable, though she sets her jaw.

"Yeah." He says, as they walk out onto the catwalk. "They're a little bit bigger than a 22."

Fury tells her that they're next-gen. He tells her that Stark helped with the engines, and that they'll never need to come down again when they're in the air. He tells her that they can read a terroist's DNA before he even comes out of his hiding place, and the tightness in her chest increases bit by bit. Does he not see what he has here? One mistake, one slip up...

"I thought the punishment usually came after the crime." He speaks so fondly of this Insight, and she can't help but feel damn disgusted.

"We can't afford to wait that long." He finishes, and Stella looks up towards the helicarrier in front of them. "We're going to stop a lot of threats before they even happen." He says, and she hears leather on metal as his hands clench around the railing. They've stopped walking now, and if he expected to hear some form of admiration from her, she's certainly not going to give it to him.

"By holding a gun to everyone on Earth and calling it protection." She says. Stella looks back to him finally, eye to eyepatch once more, and Fury's expression has clearly become one of annoyance.

"You know, I read those SSR files." If she twitches, he doesn't notice. "Greatest Generation? You guys did some pretty nasty stuff." She can't help the snort that follows. Nothing to this extent.

"We compromised." She answers, coldly. "Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well." He's pressed a button he shouldn't have, and any chance of compromise has certainly been shut down now. She isn't damn well interested in a thing he has to say, she's damn well tired of acting as his clean-up crew, and she's not going to lie down and roll over to this. "But we did it so people could be free." Stella raises a hand then, pointing to the guns, elevated and inactive. "This isn't freedom. This is fear." He's shut her down, and she can recognize when she's done the same.

"SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be." He turns to face her, narrowing his eye. "It's getting past time for you to get with that program, Cap." Another challenge. So, Stella gives him her brilliant showgirl smile.

"Don't hold your breath." She turns her back on him then without waiting for a response and paces away back down the catwalk, horror uncoiling in her chest in a way she doesn't like at all. Straight to the daycare, she decides. She's got a few things to show Joanna.

___________________________________________________________

Joanna clings to her coat while they walk into the museum. It wasn't hard to get in, and Stella's quite pleased for that. The museum is full of other families, excited children pointing at murals and dragging their parents from exhibit to exhibit. Nobody pays the single mother and the infant any mind, and Stella doesn't try to draw attention to herself. The room is open and filled with her history, everything from a screen that transitions between her pre and post serum self to a photograph of the old apartment building she'd grown up in, sadly declaring it had been condemned and bulldozed some time in the 1960's. A few ecstatic little girls stand against some of the screens, comparing themselves to her, and Stella would smile were her attention not elsewhere.

"Look, Jo..." She speaks gently to the child in her arms, who looks up at her in rapt attention as she always does. "There's your daddy." Stella points to the largest mural behind the costumes of the Howling Commandos, seeing the face of Bucky Barnes. To her right, where he's always been.

"Dada!" squeals Joanna, and Stella gives a small smile, adjusting her grip on the little girl and not having the heart to quiet her. "Dada, dada!" A voiceover above them talks about her life in a reverent tone that the Captain can't quite take seriously. Stella moves through an opening in the currently dismal crowd, towards a transparent wall displaying a face she would know anywhere, no matter what had pulled them apart. A sense of distance has settled on her shoulders, as if all this memorabilia and all these objects are screaming the lives of someone else. She doesn't feel like the heroic and brave woman they describe, the defiant girl who spat in the face of adversity. She doesn't feel like the icon of liberty and freedom, she doesn't feel like a rallying point. She feels like a mother. She feels tethered to the little girl in her arms, and still lost as if whatever compass had been leading her had told her the wrong directions.

The wall in front of her now talks about her best friend. Her husband, but they don't call him that. They weren't buried side by side in Arlington, though there's a statue there- his grave is near his parents in Brooklyn, and she was buried Rogers. She scans the words arbitrarily, long enough to note that they got his birthday wrong, before looking down to the screen at the base of it. Above her, the voiceover mentions that Barnes was the only Commando to give his life in service of his country.

Joanna squirms as Stella lowers her enough to see.

"See, baby girl?" She smiles as she holds Jo to her chest. "There's me, and your daddy. Handsome man, ain't he? You'd have loved him." Jo smiles and tries to paw at the screen, her tiny hands grabbing at the faded film beneath the glass as she once again gives an excited cry of "Dada!"

Stella remembers that interview, if not fondly. The interviewer had been smart enough to make them laugh, and she's glad to see Bucky's face in film immortalized in a smile and a laugh, though a dim thought tells her that she wishes it were in color. She misses his eyes, his voice, his hands, his lips. But there's more to see than just this. So, the Captain hoists her daughter up again. Jo doesn't voice any objections, putting her chin on Stella's shoulder and looking around the museum, clearly drinking in every sight she can. She gives a wide berth to the darkened room filled with the sound of wind and fog on the ground, and steps sideways into where she can hear a familiar voice discussing a mission.

The date on the recording is 1953. Agent Peggy Carter of the SSR, it declares, and Stella stares at the face of the woman she's sure she could've loved with a mix of sorrow and pleasure. She talks of the winter rescue, and then carries on into saying that Stella had even been responsible for saving the life of the man she would marry. The Captain stands against the wall, looks down to Joanna, then places a gentle kiss on the top of her little girl's head.

"We've got someone to go visit, Jo." She says, quietly as not to disturb the other people watching Peggy talk, before she turns around and paces past the ghosts that surround her and the people who watch them with such revelry. It won't take long to get to the retirement home, she knows, and she's put this off for too long.

Stella tells Joanna stories as they drive. She tells her about a princess and her prince, and about a dragon who rescued the princess when her prince went missing. She tells her about a brave group of men that saved many of the poor villagers, and she laughs when Joanna insists that the story needs more dinosaurs. Joanna adds her own bits here and there, declaring that the princess and the prince went to live with the dragon in the end who was not a mean dragon at all, and Joanna insists that the villagers that they rescued were bunches and bunches of mice. She says it in her babytalk voice, in words that aren't quite words, and Stella smiles.

The retirement home is not a very comfortable place. It doesn't feel like a place that Peggy Carter belongs in. In Stella's mind, Peggy is standing tall and powerful, a gun clutched in her hand, her lips painted red, her dark hair blowing in the wind. In Stella's mind, the woman is strength and power and a symbol, the encouragement to keep going. Move forward. Do not, for the life of you, ever stop. So, when Stella sets Joanna down to play with an attendant in the next room, coming into the musty-smelling room to see the frail old woman in the bed, some part of her breaks.

"It's good to see you again." She says as she sits down close to the bed, watching Peggy adjust herself before her eyes slip away to the photos by her bedside. Two children, a handsome husband. Something like jealousy settles in her chest, but she dismisses it.

"It is," replies Peggy, her voice still strong and unwavering despite how tired she looks. "Here I was, thinking I'd dreamed you up again. Didn't bring Joanna this time?" A wispy laugh leaves her, and Stella manages a smile in return, her eyes still on the photos.

"You should be proud of yourself, Peggy." She murmurs, after a pause of silence. There's the sound of shifting in the bed as Peggy turns her head to look at the photographs, and Stella knows the older woman is watching her for more than simply being polite.

"I have lived a life." She says, and it draws Stella's attention back to her. "My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours." Peggy's voice is kind, patient. A knot settles in the pit of the blonde's stomach, and her blue eyes sting for a second. Stella makes no move to stop herself, shifting that much closer to the old woman in order to take one of her withered hands in her own.

"S'not all bad, now." Stella manages. "I have Joanna, and I'm doing good work..." She trails off, and the silence is met with Peggy's soft breathing and the steady tick tock of the clock on the other side of the room.

"What is it?" The old woman is gentle, but prying. The Captain recognizes it in her, a familiar tone of voice that left no option but to answer. Her heart aches for what it used to be. What she and Peggy were, if only for a moment.

"For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I'm just not sure what that is anymore." Stella looks down to their hands, fingers curled together delicately. She wants to hold onto Peggy tightly, but she fears gripping too hard would break the woman's hand. Her touch is feather-light, careful. "I thought I could throw myself back in. Follow orders, serve..." She closes her eyes, then gives a broken laugh, tilting her head back to Peggy's face. "S'just not the same."

"Always so dramatic." Peggy tuts. The smile that comes to Stella's lips now is genuine, and the old woman goes on. "Look. You saved the world, Stella. The rest of us, well... We rather mucked it up."

"You didn't." The protest is gentle. She risks a small squeeze to the old woman's hand. Peggy's fingers run delicately up and down the back of her palm. Cold and soft against warm and strong, and the contrast is a strange comfort. "Knowing you helped found SHIELD is half the reason I stay."

Peggy gives a soft hum, and her wrinkled features move themselves into an affectionate smile.

"The world has changed, unfortunately." She says, squeezing Stella's hand in response. The Captain barely feels the change. "None of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over--" She cuts off then, tilting her head foward as a series of rough coughs come from her throat. Stella pulls her hand away immediately, looking over her shoulder to the desk and chair by the window. A glass of water sits in the shade, and she grabs it quickly, turning back to the bed and offering it to Peggy with a quiet noise.

The old woman opens her eyes and looks to the glass, the strong hand holding it, and then to the blonde's face.

"Stella." She whispers, such amazement in her tone.

"Yeah, Peggy." Stella manages, feeling her heart twist.

"You're alive." Tears prick at Peggy's eyes, her expression one of shock. "You- You came- You came back!" Her eyes are glassy. Worn. Some part of Stella remembers the broken frame she found her wedding picture in. "It's been so long, Stella. So long."

"Well, I couldn't leave my best girl." She says. The water glass rests in between her fingers, and Stella is grateful to have something to hold onto. Otherwise, she's quite certain she'd be shaking, or worse. "Not when she owes me a dance." Stella shifts closer, and she smiles. She watches the old woman cry.

The Captain sits quietly, listening to half-remembered stories, frantic words as Peggy tries desperately to share. A woman named Angie is mentioned once or twice, and Stella hopes to herself as the same story is repeated a third time that Peggy had moved on when the ice swallowed her.

When the retired agent sleeps, the sun has gone down. Stella swallows her tears, goes to collect her daughter, and tries to ignore what the doctor explains to her about terminal illness.

___________________________________________________________

Joanna is tired, her head sagging on her mother's shoulder as Stella climbs the stairs, her daughter in one arm and her apartment keys in the other. The neighbor (Kate, Stella remembers, her name is Kate) is on the phone as Stella passes her to move to unlock apartment number four, though the Captain stops to offer her a slight smile when Kate quite insistently tells the person on the other end of the line that she has to go.

"My aunt." Kate says, with a slight smile. "Kind of an insomniac." She drops the phone in her laundry basket, looking to the sleepy toddler curled against Stella's chest. "Hey there, Jo-ann." She coos, and Joanna makes a tired little noise in response. Stella hesitates, then steels herself. Move on, she thinks. Loneliness coils in her chest like a serpent. Her visit with Peggy hadn't been much of an improvement.

"If you want-- Er, if you want, you're welcome to use my machine." Stella says, a bit quicker than she means to. She follows it up with a weak shrug, adjusting her grip on Joanna. "Might be cheaper than the one in the basement."

"Yeah?" The other blonde shifts her weight. "What's it cost?"

"A cup of coffee?" The suggestion is a bit weak, and Stella imagines for a second that there's pity in the nurse's eyes.

"Thanks, but... I've already got a load in downstairs, and you really don't want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward." If the pity was there, when Kate finishes talking, it's something more like an apology.

"Ah. Well." Inwardly, Stella thinks she's doing a damn bad job of trying to find a way to connect to other people. "I'll keep my distance." Her smile is fractured.

"Hopefully not too far." Kate says with a returning grin. "Oh-- I think you left your stereo on, by the way."

It's only then that Stella becomes aware of a noise, the sound of her one record playing on what is nearly full blast. She furrows her brows, looks to her locked door, then back to Kate with an awkward thank you. Immediately, her body tenses into alertness. The loneliness is forgotten, the anxiety smothered. Mission start. Observe. Plan. Execute.

They'll expect her to come in through the front door, but she can't-- not with her tired little child in her arms. Stella wakes Joanna a bit gently, moving as quietly as she can to unlock the door. She slips inside backwards, shielding her daughter with her body, and stepping right to the coat closet beside it. The door closes with a creak, smothered by the jazz of the record as she carefully opens the coat closet.

"Stay here, baby girl." Stella whispers, tucking Joanna in beside a coat on the floor. "Mama will come get you in a minute, stay here, stay quiet." The child gives a little noise of confirmation and closes her eyes again, and Stella listens as the record winds to it's close. She shuts the door to the coat closet, stays close to the wall, and grabs her shield from it's place beside the front door as whoever is in her apartment adjusts the needle on the record to start the song over again.

She slips around the corner, into the living room, and the sight that greets her is not quite the one she was expecting.

Nick Fury sits there in the darkness beside her record player, slumped over against her armchair. Stella's body relaxes against the wall, and she scowls as she shifts forward to turn the light on.

"I don't remember giving you a key." She grumbles, looking up and feeling her eyes widen at the sight of him. Fury is bloody and raw, his wrist held at an awkward angle, his coat ripped and embedded with glass and gravel, his jaw clearly fractured and his cheekbone scraped bloody. He lifts his hand to his mouth quickly in a gesture to silence her, and reaches to the lamp to once again cover them both in darkness.

"You really think I need one?" His tone is casual, almost bemused. She watches him pull the phone out of his pocket, aware now that the loudness of the record is simply there to drown out their conversation. It's confirmed a second later when he shows her the screen and the words EARS EVERYWHERE. "My wife kicked me out."

"Didn't know you were married." There's something wrong. There's something very wrong. Nick Fury is heavily wounded, and in her apartment. Her bugged apartment. A sickness and an anger mix awkwardly in the back of her throat, and Stella furrows her brows.

"There's a lot you don't know about me." The screen changes as he presents it to her. SHIELD COMPROMISED. Stella furrows her brows, moving her hand to rest over the shield on her arm for just a moment.

"Who else knows about your wife?" She questions carefully. Her heart pounds in her ears.

"Just my friends." Fury answers, moving to stand on unsteady feet.

"Is that what we are?" Stella's jaw tenses.

"That depends." He says, stepping forward to her, and Stella steps back.

The music of the record is interrupted by three shots through the wall, the sickening thud of bullets in a body, and the following sound of Fury's cry of pain as he collapses to the floor. Stella's hearing seems to shut off and she knows she jumped back-- right to the closet where her girl waits, and the sudden sound of Joanna's wailing and the thuds against the front door make her curse. The Captain moves forward quickly, dragging the Director out of the line of sight, plaster and dust and the smell of gunpowder hovering in the air. Fury grabs tightly onto her forearm, his hand slipping down her wrist. Something small and hard is pressed into her palm.

"Don't-- trust- anyone." He spits out, and Stella looks down at him in shock. The door is bashed in with a sharp, "Captain!" as the woman looks down to the object in her hand. The thumb drive Natasha had been using on the ship. SHIELD intel.

"Captain Barnes, I'm Agent 13 of SHIELD Special Service." The nurse is still wearing her scrubs, holding a pistol, and she hadn't noticed when Stella shoved the drive into her pocket. "I've been assigned to protect you." Joanna's wailing makes Stella shift nearer to the closet.

"On whose orders?" She snaps, and Kate looks past Stella to where Fury lies on the floor with a weak answer.

"His." The nurse kneels quickly by the dying Director and pulls a radio out of her pocket. "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive, I need EMTs." She says quickly into it. Stella looks up to the window. A flash of red and metal. A shift in the darkness.

"Do we have a twenty on the shooter?" The dispatcher questions. Stella raises her shield.

"Tell him I'm in pursuit."

The Captain wastes no time. She throws herself through the hallway window into the building ahead of her, knowing that the sniper is inevitably travelling by rooftop. But there's only direction they could really go in, and so Stella follows it. She leaps over desks and around corners, using her shield to force open doors and keep her momentum despite crashing into more than one wall. Papers go flying and she catches a glimpse of the sniper through one of the walls, baring her teeth as she watches him jump onto a lower rooftop ahead of her.

Stella dives through the window, lands in a roll on the lower rooftop, and in one fluid motion she stands and throws her shield right for the shooter's back.

He turns with inhuman speed, and there's another flash of metal as his hand clenches around her shield. Metal hand. Metal arm. Her heart pounds in her ears and time seems to slow as she looks to him, taking in as much information as she can. Dark, dark eyes. Empty emotionless void eyes, ringed in black. Long hair blowing in the wind, a mask that covers his face like a muzzle, and a gleaming metal arm that whirs and whispers as he turns and throws her shield right back to her. His face is void of all emotion, empty of everything, his eyes show her nothing, and ice trickles down her spine.

It hits her in the stomach and she catches it with both hands to keep it from potentially rupturing an organ, but the strength with which it was thrown has her sliding backwards a few feet. By the time she looks up again, the empty ghost is gone, even when she hurries to the edge of the building. Stella stands on the ridge, looking down into the street with her jaw clenched. She feels cold, aware only of the fact that the man seemed to be cloaked in what she'd name only as emptiness and of a nagging feeling that something was very, very wrong. Metal arm. Metal arm. Those eyes- those eyes. Such dark eyes.

She gives a slow breath. Sirens whistle in her ears, and so does the distant wailing of her daughter.

___________________________________________________________

  
By the time Natasha Romanoff arrives to the hospital, Stella Barnes and Maria Hill have been sitting quietly in the small room off the operating theater, watching through the glass. Stella hears the redhead bursting through the swinging doors, listens as she leans forward, and ignores her question to Hill on whether or not Fury was going to make it.

The man looks vulnerable, surrounded by doctors. His chest is moving imperceptibly, and the medics swarm around him like insects on a fresh corpse. Stella watches them, her hands pressed against the small ledge in front of her. Joanna whimpers beside her in a stroller, a bag packed underneath it. She called Sam, when things got bad. Asked for a bit of help in looking after her daughter. Her eyes are closed while she listens to Natasha's pleading. Stella can't risk losing her baby girl, and if SHIELD itself is becoming dangerous, she sure as hell isn't about to trust anyone in it to look after her.

"Tell me about the shooter." Nat's demand breaks her from her distant thinking, and Stella shifts to stand properly without looking at her.

"He was fast." She manages. "Strong. And he had a metal arm." Natasha's whole body seems to tense, somehow, when she mentions the metal arm.

"There was no rifling. Completely untraceable." Hill offers in response.

"Soviet made." The Widow whispers, and both Hill and Stella look to her in some amount of surprise. Any other questions they would've had are silenced by the doctor's frantic yelling. The monitor has gone silent. Flatlined.

Stella turns her back.

She kneels in front of her crying daughter, knowing that the girl is exhausted, and takes one of her hands. The drive is heavy in her pocket and she thumbs the toddler's palm very gently.

"It's alright, baby girl." She murmurs. "Someone is going to come look after you. Do you wanna meet Sam?" Joanna's eyes are tearful and she whimpers as she holds onto her mother's hand with all her tiny fingers and an admirable death grip.

"Wanna go home." She whines. "Go home."

"In a little while, kiddo. You can go to sleep here, though. I'll look after you." Stella shakes her head, leaning forward to kiss the girl's forehead. "Mama will be back as soon as she can, too. Promise. Sam'll look after you." The Captain stands very slowly, tucking the soft blue security blanket closer around her child, and when she turns her head Natasha is standing far too close. Hill has gone, she realizes. To get the body, says a numb little voice in the back of her head.

"Why was Fury in your apartment last night?" Natasha's question is sharp. Aggressive. Hostile. It's not something Stella's used to seeing from her- but then, even after months of living together, Stella's not quite sure she knows who Natasha is to begin with.

"I don't know." Don't trust anyone, it had said. Did that include himself? Did that include Natasha?

The redhead's light green eyes are cold, analyzing. But she smiles.

"You're a terrible liar." Her eyes flicker down to drowsy and weepy little Joanna, before Natasha turns on her heel and storms right off out into the hallway. Stella follows after her with the stroller in tow, looking up and down the hallway. Rumlow and the STRIKE team are in one direction, talking amongst themselves. She recognizes the guard position- Murphy and Westfahl are watching the door, and Rollins' eyes are on her. Stella gives him a slight nod in greeting, and looks down the other direction to wait for Sam while keeping her hand off of the drive in her pocket.

Sam arrives in a few minutes, apologizes for the wait, and the short conversation Stella has with him is apologetic and relaxed. Joanna is asleep, but Stella wakes her long enough to say goodbye and introduce her to her new babysitter. Sam is just leaving when Rumlow approaches, tapping Stella on the shoulder a bit rougher than he might've intended.

"They want you back at SHIELD, Cap." He says, and Stella turns to face him.

"Alright, I'll head there in a few minutes." Her brows furrow slightly. Fury's words echo in her mind. Don't trust anyone.

"They want you now." Rumlow insists, and Stella tilts her head up, tightens her jaw, and gives a slight nod.

"Okay. Go back to the team, I'll follow in a minute." She glances to the janitor reloading the vending machine a few doors down. Rumlow's answer is a grunt Stella labels as annoyed, but he follows her orders, heading back to the rest of STRIKE as Stella turns and paces past the janitor as casually as she can. Pulling the drive out of her pocket, she edges it into the very last slot behind the bubblegum. Not like anyone will come and buy something from a sixth floor vending machine.

"Let's go." When she paces back to the STRIKE team, they all look to her. Don't trust anyone, she thinks. These are people who have killed for her, under her orders. But she doesn't know a single one of them, does she?

"STRIKE, move out." Rumow orders. He stands slightly behind Stella as they walk, and the woman is absently aware of how much this feels like an escort.

___________________________________________________________

Stella changes into her uniform before they arrive, places her shield on her back, and paces down the top floor hallway towards the Secretary's office with an annoyed expression on her face. Anxiety and anger and uncertainty are nestled together in her gut, resulting in a sick feeling tightening her chest. She slows down at the sight of Agent 13 (another liar) and the Secretary speaking, and paces right past her.

"Captain." The other woman tries.

"Neighbor." Stella grunts in return, not looking at her as she passes.

The Secretary is an old man. His hair was red at one point, but is going quite grey, and wrinkles decorate his features in a way that suggests he might have been a handsome youth, but had certainly lost it now. Everything about him seems quite professional, and he offers his hand to her as she stops to greet him.

"Captain Barnes. I'm Alexander Pierce." He says, and Stella eases herself from anger into calm politeness.

"Sir, it's an honor." She says, though she doesn't smile, and shakes his hand firmly.

"The honor's mine. My father served in the hundred and first. Come in." He gestures with a jerk of his head, and Stella tries to remember if she'd ever known a Pierce. There'd been a lot of men, both from that factory and subsequent rescues. His face is unfamiliar, his voice forgettable, his features entirely average. Stella dismisses it and follows him into the office, closing the door behind her and setting her shield down against the couch.

"Nick Fury and I were good friends." He says, in a tone that suggests something more similar to pouring a drink and talking about something far more pleasant than a recent murder. "I met him years ago, out in Bogata. He was heading a SHIELD base there, close to the embassy I worked at at the time." Pierce sits down and gestures for Stella to do the same, and she sits opposite him, crossing one leg over the other and setting her hands on her knees. She doesn't interrupt.

"There was a raid on the embassy by rebels, after a long time of peace and quiet. Security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick insisted we storm the base, but I said no, we'll negotiate. Turns out, the rebels didn't negotiate, and they put out a kill order." He sits back, watching her. "They storm the basement of the embassy and what do they find? They find it empty. Nick Fury had disobeyed my direct order and carried out a military operation on foreign soil. He saved thirteen lives, including my daughter's."

"So you gave him a promotion." She says, not breaking eye contact. There is something wrong about this man. Something he gives off, a sensation of sorts that seems to put needles into her fingers. Don't trust anyone. She doesn't think she could trust him.

"I never had any cause to regret it." Pierce leans forward, then gestures to the screen behind the couches. "I want you to see something."

The screen comes to life, presenting the head of the pirates that Stella had taken out just a few days earlier. He is surrounded by two SHIELD interrogators, his head bowed forward. Stella simply stares at the screen, halfway wondering what this intention was. Does he really think the pirates killed Fury?

"Assassination isn't Batroc's line." She says, looking back to Pierce.

"No, it's not. But, the prevailing theory is that he was involved. Nick hasn't been very popular among the council after New York." He's still sitting forward, and Stella is aware that he is watching her closely. She takes it as a challenge. But, he is her superior, and if she's going to get information she's got to take advantage of that.

"You think Fury hired the pirates on the Lemurian Star?" She questions, carefully.

"They were paid a very large sum of money. It was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, and the final one is registered to a Jacob Veech."

"Someone I should know?"

"Not likely, Veech died six years ago. He lived at Elmhurst, 104. When I first met Nick his mother lived at 106. The theory is that Nick Fury was involved in the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour, and that led to Nick's death." Pierce finishes, clasps his hands together. The screen showing the interrogation goes dark. Stella doesn't dare let the silence go on longer than it needs to.

"If you really knew Nick Fury, you'd know that's not true." A seed of doubt rests in the back of her mind, but then- Fury had come to her, hadn't he? There'd been a problem. Sure, she'd been sick and tired of being the Director's clean-up crew, but that was a man who believed humanity could be better. That was not a man who would sell intelligence that would potentially harm others just for personal gain. Wasn't he?

"Why do you think we're talking?" He responds. Somehow, she finds it hard to believe Fury or Pierce on this matter. "Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?" There's her answer. Pierce says it very calmly and moves to stand up, pacing over to the window.

"I don't know." Stella gives him the same answer she gave Natasha, bowing her head slightly. This man is wrong, says a little voice. This man is a sickness. That same sense of uncertainty and doubt settles in her bones, needles in her fingers. This man is a sickness. This man is a liar. Pierce gives a slow inhale, then an equally slow nod, turning his back on her to look over the horizon and the sprawling buildings of the Triskelion below.

"I took a job on the council not because I wanted to, but because Nick asked me to." He says. "We were both realists. We both knew that to build a truly better world sometimes means tearing the old one down. And that makes enemies." He looks over his shoulder towards her, and his eyes rest on her in an electric way that makes Stella's whole body tense uncomfortably. Pierce turns to face her, leaning back against the window. "Those people who would call you dirty when you get down into the mud to build something better. The thought that those people could be happy today? That makes me really, really angry."

Stella stands up slowly, moving her hands to hold onto the belt of her uniform. She furrows her brows slightly, and says nothing.

"Did you know your apartment was bugged?" Pierce asks. She doesn't much mind letting him do the talking, not now, but answering his questions still seems to be her best opportunity. After all, he seems like the sort of man willing to speak for the sake of hearing his own voice. This man is a sickness.

"I did, because Nick told me." Stella meets his eyes. No hesitation, do not back down.

"Did he tell you that he was the one who bugged it?" Pierce has moved over to sit down on the edge of the desk as Stella gives a slight nod. She pauses for a moment, inhales slowly through her nose.

"He told me not to trust anyone." She murmurs. It is a challenge. A challenge that Pierce will not rise to. The old man tilts his head, slides his hands into his pockets.

"I wonder if that included him."

"I'm sorry. Those were his last words." Stella says, putting her hands to her sides. This man is a sickness. This man is a sickness. He is a liar. Don't trust anyone. "Excuse me." She moves over to take her shield up from where it lays on the floor. Her discomfort is immense, and she is getting no answers in this meeting. She'll do better on her own, figuring all of this out, and she'd rather do it away from the prying eyes of SHIELD superiors.

"Captain." Pierce says as she nears the door, and Stella stops, looking over her shoulder to him. "Somebody murdered my friend, and I'm going to find out why. Anyone who gets in my way is going to regret it. Anyone." So he did take her challenge. The Captain merely nods in response.

She steps out into the hallway, allows herself one shaky and gasping breath from the suffocation of the office, then steels herself. This is a mission. Observe. Plan. Execute. Mission start, and now she has a good idea of where to begin any investigation. Her shield is a heavy comfort on her back as she paces down the hallway towards the elevator. Her mind wanders to the stranger on the rooftop, the sniper who had shot Fury three times through a wall. She'd have to find him, first. If she found the killer, she'd know who was behind it. Those empty eyes swim to the front of her mind's eye, the void of the stranger's features. A man cloaked in nothing. Find the killer, find out who they were, and take advantage of that.

Achingly, she wishes for Bucky.

The thought comes out of nowhere, and she stops as she reaches the elevator, shaking her head quickly. No, there's no time to let herself collapse in thinking about her husband. She doesn't know why the longing is suddenly so much sharper, and she doesn't allow herself to hold onto it.

The elevator slides open, Stella mumbles a request to get to the lobby, and turns her back against the wall in time to see Rumlow and two of the STRIKE team hurrying down the hall to stop the elevator.

"Forensics," He says, and the robotic voice answers easily. Stella steps aside to let the three men in without crowding the elevator, not bothering to greet any of them. Her head is bowed and her mind's elsewhere- but she recognizes something in the way their bodies are tensed. One of the man's hands is resting on his stun baton. Her blue eyes flicker from his hand to his face.

"Cap." Rumlow says, and Stella looks to him.

"Rumlow." She answers, shifting back again.

"Forensics found some fibers on the roof they want us to see, you want me to get the tac team ready?" He stands there, relaxed in a way the other two are tensed. The other strike agents are very pointedly not looking towards her.

"No." She says, crossing her arms over her chest. "Let's wait and see what it is, first."

Rumlow nods, gives a slight pause. "Messed up what happened to Fury." He mutters. "M'sorry." It's a gesture he has no reason to give. She wasn't close to Fury. She barely knew the man. Hell, she barely knows Rumlow. Don't trust anyone.

"Thank you." She says in response, and then falls silent again. Rumlow says nothing more, the other two strike agents remain silent. The quiet rests over the elevator like a thick blanket, and Stella listens to the shifting of clothing and the sound of leather gloves against the stun baton. Why is he gripping onto it so tightly?

The elevator slides to a stop. She glances up to see two office workers stepping into it. One apologizes to her as he bumps her, and in that split second glance she can see utter panic and fear in his eyes. Something is wrong. There's going to be an attack. Stella stays quiet and looks away from him, glancing out the glass windows. Five men in a cramped space, one of whom is holding far too tightly to his stun baton and another whose hands are shaking while he grips onto his briefcase. Rumlow's posture is relaxed in a staged way.

Once again, the elevator stops. Three burly men stand before them and slide in, jostling her uncomfortably to the center. They've put her in a vulnerable position, she muses. They expect to be able to take her down. She'd be flattered, if this wasn't so infuriating. The doors slide closed. Heat and silence linger over the whole thing, and before it starts moving, Stella sighs.

"Before we get started..." She begins, glancing to the individual men. Not a soul is looking at her. "Does anybody want to get off?"

It starts the reaction in a heartbeat. Rollins turns, stun baton in hand, and two men at once grab her by the wrists while another grabs her by the throat and forces her back. Stella wastes no time as her shield is knocked from her back. Her knee collides with someone's groin and she kicks up with her other leg, knocking one of the men with the briefcases back. The magnetic cuff he'd been holding locks itself to the ceiling, and Stella gives a sharp yelp as the other one is locked around her wrist.

Captive, then. Hell no.

Her free fist collides with someone's face and they drop like a stone to the floor. She takes out the man who had been holding the stun baton too tightly with a quick movement that smashes his face into the metal handrail with an audible crunch that tells her she's broken his nose. She reaches to grab her shield, and someone kicks her hand, sending the metal cuff up to lock itself to the metal above her head. Stella snarls, cursing the now limited range of movement, but there's no time to waste. Her mind moves fast, and she moves quicker.

Four men down. Four to go.

She drives her fist hard into someone's stomach, knocking the wind out of them, and they fall on top of one of their coworkers. A foot to the groin has another doubling over, and she raises her knee harshly to crack into his head and send him toppling over. The third is shoved back and trips over his companion, knocks his head, and is out like a light. She turns her attention to the cuff when the onslaught stops, pulling herself up and bracing her feet against the wall until the cuff is loosened.

Rumlow lands a hit to the back of her head, and she bites through the tip of her tongue, whirling on him. He's got a stun baton held tightly in one hand, activated to it's highest setting. Deadly to any normal human being, but then, she knows they're not trying to kill her.

"I just want you to know, Cap." He rasps, breathing heavily. His nose is bloody. "This ain't personal-!" As he finishes his sentence, he lunges forward, driving the baton against her side. The electricity is painful, and Stella clenches her jaw as it rips through her. Once, twice, three times, and she refuses to go down. Her whole body feeling tense, her heart racing, she turns around and grabs Rumlow by the wrist. Snapping it has him dropping the baton and roaring, and she wastes no time in driving her knee into his stomach and more or less throwing him up by his sides into the top of the elevator. Eight men down. Her chest heaves, and she stomps on the edge of her shield to have it jumping back up onto her arm.

"It kinda feels personal." She hisses down to him, looking at the pile of bodies around her. None of them are dead, but none of them are going to be waking up soon. Stella hits her wrist hard with her shield, shattering the cuff, and stumbles to the elevator door. She jabs the door open button and freezes at the sight of ten armed STRIKE men dashing down the hallway. Giving a sharp curse under her breath, she turns and strikes the wires of the elevator's system through the shattered glass of the wall and crouches, gripping onto the slightly bloody handrail to keep her balance.

The elevator screeches to a halt as she catches her breath, in an awkward space between two floors. Stella pulls herself to her feet, tugging the doors open, and scowling at the sight of another number of the STRIKE team. SHIELD's own personal army, she thinks, and then looks around quickly as she forces the door shut. She's corned here. Waiting means they'll open it, or someone on the floor will wake up, and she sure as hell ain't going to just stay put and let them take her prisoner. Clenching her jaw, she shakes her head, and eases herself to the railing furthest away from the side of the elevator open to the lower buildings of the Triskelion.

"Give it up, Barnes! You got nowhere to go!" A voice says to her left. Damn you, she thinks, and then throws herself forward.

She is aware of glass shattering twice, and is quick enough to curl her whole body above her shield before she hits the marble floor. Pain rips through her, a quick analysis telling her she's broken a rib, but she damn well can't stay still. She uncurls, puts her fist against the floor, and listens to another woman scream as she forces herself upwards and dashes towards the garage, forcing her shield onto her back.

It doesn't take long to get to her motorcycle, her heart pounding in her ears as she moves fast, fast, faster. She slips beneath the Quinjet they send out to chase her down, one well aimed throw of her shield crippling the engine enough to have it listing far to the left and crashing into one of the barricades that block the bridge.

The drive is the only thing on her mind. They must've known she had it- must've tried to attack her to get it. They wanted to take her captive. The hospital. Move.

___________________________________________________________

She discards her uniform somewhere along the way in favor of a hoodie and shoes that feel too loose around her feet. She bunches up her hair beneath the hood, brushing it out of her eyes and pinning it back, and walking as quickly as she deems not suspicious with her hands in the pockets of the hood. Up to the sixth floor, to the middle of the hall, and--

The gum is gone. The drive is gone. Panic and shock make her clench her jaw, brows furrowed and fists clenched in her pockets. A pop of a bubble behind her makes her eyes flicker to the reflection, and Natasha smirks at her in the glass. Stella turns to her, stares, then grips the other woman harshly by the forearm and forces her back into the small room behind them.

More or less throwing Natasha against the wall as the door slams shut, she snarls.

"Where is it?" Her tone is harsh.

"Safe." Nat answers, watching her with an expression that suggests she's surprised Stella could act so hostile.

"Do better." Stella snaps, gripping tighter to the woman's forearms. Hard enough to bruise, but the thought doesn't occur to her.

"Where did you get it?" It only takes Natasha a second of Stella's untrusting silence. "Fury gave it to you. Why?"

"What's on it?" Stella counters.

"I don't know--"

"Stop lying!"

"I only act like I know everything, Stella!" Natasha snaps back, with an almost childish huff. Stella shakes her head, annoyance and aggrivation present in every inch of her posture.

"SHIELD thinks Fury hired the pirates." Stella says, not daring to release Natasha. She's surprised that the other woman hasn't tried to attack her yet. Natasha is a friend. Natasha is more than a friend. Isn't she?

"Well, it makes sense, Fury needed a way in, so do you--" She squeaks as Stella's grip tightens again, then scowls. "Let go, Stella, you're not helping anything by attacking me--"

"What the hell is going on?" She hisses, and Natasha immediately looks back to Stella's face.

"I know who killed Fury." Her tone is quick, breathy. Stella assumes it means Nat's wizened up to the fact that Stella's not in the mood for nonsense. It's the right thing to say. Stella feels her grip loosen, enough to stop hurting the other woman but certainly enough to tell her that if she tries anything, something's going to be broken. Natasha gives an uneasy breath, exhaling through her mouth, and she begins.

"They call him the Winter Soldier." She says, and Stella furrows her brows, stepping back some and finally letting Natasha go. The sniper, she remembers. The icy feeling of cold trickling down her spine. The dark, empty eyes. Winter seems like an accurate picture. "He's credited for over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So he's a ghost story?" Fifty years makes no sense, not quite for the realm of a professional killer. The sniper had looked like a young man; and if not young, he had at least been Stella's age. He didn't look like an old man. Natasha gives a twitch of a smile.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Someone shot out my tires near Odessa, and we went right over a cliff. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him, right through me." She pulls up the side of her shirt and gives a light smile. "Bye bye bikinis."

"Yeah." Stella mutters, looking down to the scar. "Bet you look terrible in them now."

"Going after the Soldier's a dead end, I know, I've tried." Natasha finishes, pulling the drive out of her pants pocket and finally offering it to Stella after letting her shirt fall back down to cover the old wound. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."

The Captain's blue eyes look down to the silver metal of the drive, and she takes it gently, now feeling a bit guilty for attacking the other woman. Yes, Natasha is a friend. She may not know the woman well, and this doesn't mean trust, but... She needs allies. She can't do this alone. Stella looks back to meet Natasha's green eyes, and nods.

"Then let's find out what the ghost wants."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are my lifeblood.  
> if you need to reach me, you can find my tumblr [here](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing."
> 
> "Well." Stella sits back in the chair with a bit of a weak laugh. The knot that had unravelled in Joanna's presence begins to creep it's way back into her chest, tightening around her heart. "Guess I just like to know who I'm fighting." They're interrupted by a knock at the door before Natasha can answer, and both women look to see Sam peeking in like he expects something to explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for stickin' around. here's the very end.

"How's she doing?"

"She's doing alright, Cap. Keeps wanting you, though. I told her you'd talk to her."

"Course I will." Stella smiles into the payphone, shooting a glance at Natasha. They're somewhere in downtown DC, surrounded by tourists and people with better places to be than the steps of national monuments. Natasha blows bubbles at regular intervals, her arms crossed, her body positioning placing her just conveniently between Stella and one of the cameras. "Put her on, Sam, it won't be too long."

"Sure thing."

She listens quietly to the dim sound of Sam calling to Joanna ("You wanna talk to Mommy, Jo-ann?") and waits, biting her lip and once again watching Natasha. The other woman's green eyes are fixated on a point in the distance.

"Mama!" Jo's squeal is upset more than anything else, and Stella winces.

"Hi, baby girl. Is Sam being nice to you?"

"Gave me a toy."

"Did you thank him?"

"Come home?"

"I will, baby girl." Stella says, softly. She feels tense, as if she can feel every ounce of blood pumping through her veins, hear each rush of her own breathing. Her daughter. Her little girl. She's in danger, and Stella damn well can't risk going to see her. "I will soon, I promise. Mama's gotta go and beat some bad people, and then I'll come home and pick you up and we'll go on a picnic." She keeps her voice light, calm, affectionate. Joanna is still such a small child. She doesn't need these worries.

"Miss you."

"I miss you too, baby."

"Love you."

"I love you, too. Be nice to Sam, okay? I'll call again when I can."

Quietly, Stella places the phone back onto the reciever. She steps out of the phonebooth to join Natasha, and the other woman nudges her in the shoulder towards the street and a parking lot at the end of it that leads to the mall. The silver drive is heavy in Stella's pocket, and she imagines for a moment that she can feel the way she's grinding her teeth.

"Kid'll be fine." Natasha reassures, spitting the gum onto the sidewalk. "Half of SHIELD doesn't even know she exists, and the other half sure isn't about to attack a kid."

"It's not them attacking her that I'm worried about," Stella mutters as they approach the sliding doors. The mall is relatively crowded for a weekday, people milling about doing next to nothing. She takes in the scene as quickly as she can, analyzing and searching for any kind of hint. She expects SHIELD agents to come after them- how could they not, after that escape from the Triskelion? Stella Barnes knows better than to ever underestimate SHIELD. She's worked with some good men and women, and some clever ones.

Her mind goes to the STRIKE team left unconscious in the elevator, and her jaw tightens.

"First rule of going on the run." Natasha murmurs to her side. "Don't run, walk." Their pace is quick but not unusual, and Stella's got her shoulder pressed against Nat's side. The words are very nearly ignored, and Stella trusts Nat to lead them where they need to go. She analyzes their surroundings quite carefully, taking note of the old man with an icecream cone sitting on a bench, the group of teenagers laughing around the fountain, a little boy running after his mother and shrieking about the new toy she'd bought him. Nat's gesture of threading her fingers through Stella's is thoughtless and absent, and neither of them choose to acknowledge it.

Natasha's strides are lengthy as they head towards a store full of computers and electronic devices, and Stella shoots one more glance over their shoulder, adjusting the baseball cap and pushing up the ridiculous glasses that the redhead had insisted would make sure nobody recognized her. Not that it made all that much sense; she was still terribly on edge, disguise or not.

"How long do we have?" Stella mutters into Natasha's ear when they choose a computer a bit further from the center of the store.

"About nine minutes from... now." The Widow reponds, plugging the silver drive into the side of the computer. The windows that pop up as a result are Natasha's expertise, so Stella chooses to post herself as a guard once again. Let the woman who knows what she's doing work.

"It's got a level three homing program." Nat elaborates. "Since we booted up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are. With luck, we'll be gone before they get here." Her tone is mildly frustrated. "Or not. This drive's protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

"We don't have a lot of time." Stella hisses under her breath, turning back to look to the computer properly, one hand placed on the redhead's shoulder. "Can you get around it?"

"The person who wrote this is slightly smarter than I am." Nat glances to her, gives her a scowl, then looks back down to the laptop. "Slightly. I'll try rerouting; if we can't find our way into the files, we can at least find out where it came from."

"Just--"

"Can I help you?" Stella jumps at the appearance of the clerk, caught off guard and absolutely unable to do anything other than trip over her tongue.

"I, ah--" The Captain stammers, and the Widow takes her opportunity.

"My fiance and I were just looking up honeymoon destinations." The Widow sighs dreamily and puts her hands on the Captain's shoulders, smiling brightly at the clerk. He looks at the two woman with an expression of bewildered surprise, then smiles in return.

"Yeah." Stella stammers. "We're gettin' married."

"Nice. Where were you guys thinkin' about going?"

"Er." Stella glances towards the laptop, and then back to the clerk, who by now is quite curiously examining her face. "New Jersey." The man's expression is one of steady recognition, before he lifts his hand and points at her with a lazy gesture of his wrist.

"I have the exact same glasses." He chuckles. "Well, if you two need anything, I've been Aaron." With that, he waves, and Stella swallows down the lump in her throat long enough to shoot Natasha a quite serious glare. Before she can open her mouth, however, Nat gestures to the screen.

"Got it." She drawls with a smirk, knowing full well what sort of disguises they've just slipped into. Stella looks down to the screen, leaning forward slightly to see the name properly. Camp LeHigh, New Jersey. Something inside her aches. "You know it?" Nat's question has the Captain's blue eyes shifting back to the redhead.

"I used to." She mutters. "Let's go."

The two of them exit the store, and Natasha once again slips her hand into Stella's. They walk shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Stella goes back into her method of observe, plan, execute, and this time it pays off.

"Two behind." She mutters under her breath to the woman beside her. "Two on the upper floors, two coming right for us. They engage, I'll fend them off, you head to the exit and I'll catch up--"

"Shut up." Nat snarls. "Put your arm around me, laugh at something I said."

"What?"

"Do it."

Stella does as she's told, quickly putting her arm over the skinnier woman's shoulders and bowing her head close to give a very obviously fake laugh. It pays off, however, and the two SHIELD agents dressed in black merely slide right past them. Stella looks over her shoulder in shock, and then looks back down to Natasha's face. The other woman's expression is pure determination, and Stella gives herself a moment to realize that perhaps Nat is a little better at her job than she gives her credit for.

They approach the escalator carefully, slipping into the crowd side by side. Stella lets Natasha go first, and as they're sandwiched inbetween a few other people, both of them see a bruised and battered Rumlow coming up the other side. Nat turns on her heel, looking Stella in the eye quickly.

"Kiss me." She says, and Stella tenses. With a snort, Natasha elaborates. "Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable."

"Yes, they do!" Stella hisses under her breath in response, and she's not given a chance to object again.

Natasha's hands are on her cheeks in seconds, pulling her down and closer, and Stella steadies herself by putting her hands on the other woman's hips. Natasha's lips taste of lipgloss and are so wonderfully soft. Stella feels her grip tightening and for just a moment feels the smaller woman flush against her, warm hands on her cheeks, affection she needs to name as genuine, affection she needs to name--

The kiss breaks, Nat turns around, and Stella is left wiping the remains of the other woman's lipgloss off her own mouth.

"Still uncomfortable?" Nat calls to her as she begins to take the steps of the escalator to move down further.

"That's not exactly the word I would use." Stella answers, her cheeks flushed, and her body feeling unusually warm.

___________________________________________________________

They steal a car.

Or rather, they borrow a car.

Stella's not exactly proud of it. She knows someone's going to have their day ruined by this, but when she's finished hotwiring the truck and sliding into the driver's seat before anyone can see them, she decides that the need they've got right now just can't wait for a rental car and she doubts that her motorcycle is a safe bet at the moment. She knows the way, and they spend most of the drive silent, her eyes on the road, her hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, and her mind racing. Most of her focus is on Joanna.

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Nat drawls from her place in the passenger's seat, and Stella gives her a cursory glance and rolls her eyes at the position the other woman has put herself in.

"We're borrowing. Get your feet off the dash." The Captain answers, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as they pass the sign declaring New Jersey is nearly here.

"I have a question for you." The Widow begins. "Of which you do not have to answer. But, I kinda feel like if you don't answer it you will be answering it, y'know--"

Stella's annoyed look gets Natasha to clear her throat.

"Was that your first real kiss since 1945?" She questions, pulling both her legs into the chair and sitting cross-legged on the seat.

"That bad, huh?" The Captain gives a slight scoff and shakes her head.

"No, not bad, I was just wondering how much practice you've had--"

"I don't need practice--"

"Everybody needs practice!" Natasha insists, and Stella snorts, but the Widow grins regardless. "Nobody else, then?" The question is gentle, and Stella finds herself thumbing the ring on her finger for the first time in longer than she's really paid any attention to.

"Kinda hard to move on from someone you shared everything with." She answers, as dismissively as she can manage. A familiar ache settles somewhere in her chest, and she thinks in silence about how Joanna's eyes match her daddy's so well. Deep green, forest green, her green eyed glory. Natasha gives a soft little noise beside her.

"You must've loved him."

"I... I did. I really did."

She hears Natasha shift again, the click of an adjusted seatbelt, and rests her head against the window. Stella does her best to ignore the way the word 'did' seems to fit awkwardly in her mouth, and the way she still sorely wants to get more out of this other woman. Selfishly, wantingly, she remembers that kiss in the mall and bites down on her lower lip. Her hands grip the steering wheel a little bit tighter.

They spend the rest of the drive silent, Natasha watching the scenery go by and Stella unraveling a knot in the pit of her stomach.

They arrive as the sun's going down to the coordinates Natasha had found. The truck comes to a halt in front of a rusty chain link fence, and Stella stares at the old signs for a long moment, bracing herself before sliding out of the car after Natasha, grabbing her shield from it's place in the backseat when they move on. The other woman is holding her phone up now, examining signals and frequencies and whatever else might reveal itself to her through that device. They walk together to the entrance, and it takes Stella just seconds to shatter the rusty old chain with her shield. She keeps it on her arm, her other hand going over the smooth edge of her weapon.

"The file came from these coordinates." Nat says, looking around in the dying light with something of a frown. A twitch of a smile curls Stella's lips, all nostalgia and absence.

"So did I." She says, just loud enough for the redhead to hear. The response is a quizzical look, but the only sound in response is the steady sound of grass and leaves and twigs underfoot, and the creak of the rusty gate dragging along the ground behind them as they pass through the perimiter. The sun goes down quite quickly now, the steady sinking down the horizon, and it's a while of Stella only standing where she is and staring around her before Nat gives an audible snort and a scoff, the sort of noise that breaks the Captain quite startlingly from her reverie.

"This is a dead end." Her tone is petulant. "No signals, no frequencies, not even radio... Whoever wrote the file must've used these coordinates to throw people off." Natasha moves to stand besides Stella as the blonde looks down a pathway towards a rusted and cracking old flagpole, and Stella opens her mouth to reply as her eyes slide away from the flagpole and to a munitions bunker.

She pauses, then grabs Natasha's hand and tugs her closer.

"Army regulations forbid storing munitions this close to the barracks. This building's in the wrong place." Stella grunts as they approach the bunker, and Nat's got a look on her face somewhere between pleasure and frustration. The Widow stands slightly behind her as they both examine the door, and the presentation of a shiny new padlock makes Stella scowl. In one quick gesture with her shield, she's shattered it, and she wastes no time in downright kicking the door in. They're greeted with a yawning darkness, and Stella steps forward, shield slightly raised.

There's a creak of old metal as they step down the stairs, and Natasha does her the service of turning on the light. It illuminates the dusty old building quite well, and when they're both at the foot of the stairs Stella lowers her shield to look around.

"This is SHIELD." Natasha's comment has a tone that Stella would halfway name as admiration. "Or at least, where it started." The symbol on the opposite wall is dark and dusty, fading as the lighting comes crackling on. The desks are dusty and abandoned, only the occasional empty folder file left behind. Stella nudges through a few pages (M. Carter is seen once or twice, but she ignores it and presses on. Mission, mission, mission.) as they pass through, and eventually they make it to what appears to be a file cabinet.

Stella slips into the little office first, glancing up to the wall at the three photographs that greet them. She can feel Natasha's eyes on the back of her head as she examines Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark, and then rests her gaze on Margaret Carter. The Captain keeps her face stoic.

"There's Stark's father." Nat drawls, glancing to Stella out of the corner of her eye. "Who's the girl?"

The Captain shakes her head slightly, adjusts her grip on her shield, and steps between the dusty, empty cabinets. Under Natasha's footsteps and the dim buzzing of the lighting in the other room, she can hear some sort of breathy wind- some noise that is only partially identifiable. Looking around carefully, Stella eventually finds the source; a spiderweb, blowing in an indoor breeze. She gives a sharp exhale.

"If you're already working in a secret office," she mutters under her breath, approaching the cabinet. Brushing away the web (with a mental apology to the spider), she hooks her fingers in the space between shelves, dragging it to the side with a rusty groan against the floor. "Why hide the elevator?" Stella and Natasha exchange a glance as the elevator door slides open, pristine and modern and slightly out of place.

They step into it together, Stella positioning herself against the back wall as Natasha uses that handy little phone of hers to once again examine the keypad for the right code. Try number one is a perfect success, and the door slides shut slowly as they begin to descend. When the door opens again, they're presented with a cavernous room, one Stella's sure extends beneath the entirety of the camp. They step out of the elevator in silence, the Captain furrowing her brows and the Widow very carefully taking a few more steps forward.

The lighting clicks on gradually, piece by piece, illuminating what Stella's rapidly decided to call an underground lair. They approach a center console, Natasha turning in a circle when they step onto the raised platform and towards the main computer.

"This can't be the data point." The Widow says with a scoff. "This technology's ancient." Stella turns back to the elevator with a clear frown as Nat examines the main computer. Eventually one particular object comes to her attention- a very modern, and very clean little usb console. There's a pause where they exchange another glance, and the redhead produces the silver drive and slides it into the first hole.

> INITIATE SYSTEM? pops up on the screen, to both of their surprise, and Natasha leans over the console.

"Y-E-S spells yes." She says, typing each letter and then clicking enter. The Widow stays bent over the console, her hands flat on either side of the keyboard. She gives a slight grin. "Shall we play a game?" She says in a sarcastic purr, chuckling as she glances over her shoulder at Stella. "It's from a movie that was really popular--"

"I know." Stella responds, rolling her eyes as a steady whirring starts up in the main console and a dim noise begins to surround them both. "I saw it." The two of them look back to the console, Natasha standing slightly to the left of Stella as a camera perks itself up and a grainy face appears on the screen.

"Rogers, Stella. Born 1920." It says, in a voice that makes Stella's blood run cold. The camera shifts itself to the shorter woman, and speaks again. "Romanov, Natalia Alianovna. Born 1985."

"It must be some sort of recording--" Natasha starts, clearly twitching at the name Natalia.

"I am not a recording, fraulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am so much more."

"Still doesn't know enough to call me Barnes." Stella grumbles under her breath, curling her fist around one of the leather straps inside of her shield and stepping off the raised platform to circle around it.

"You know this thing?" Natasha calls nervously, looking back to the Captain.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked with the Red Skull. He died years ago." Stella answers, eventually resuming her place beside Nat when it becomes obvious there's no sort of hidden room behind it.

"First correction," says the robotic voice. "I am Swiss. Second, I have never been more alive. Look around, Captain. This is my mind. Two hundred thousand feet of databanks, saving a mind that was worth more than any body. You are standing in my brain." Stella can make out the face there now, the rounded spectacles, in black and green. Her heart pounds in her chest. Her face remains stoic. For a moment, she thinks of Bucky.

"How did you get here?" She questions, sharply.

"Invited." His response is curt.

"Operation Paperclip, SHIELD recruited German scientists after the war for... strategic value." Natasha explains when Stella looks to her for elaboration, and Stella glances back to the screen afterwards. The face on the screen has not changed, but the color in it flickers. The computer is giving off a quiet buzz.

"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."

"Hydra died with the Red Skull." The Captain growls.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place." The sigil of Hydra shows itself on the screen, pitch black and sickening green, flickering in and out of place as it doubles. Stella feels her stomach twist, and sets her jaw. Natasha has stepped a bit further backwards.

"Prove it." Stella's tone is a challenge.

"Accessing archives." The only reply she gets is mechanical, something read off a screen, read aloud by some sort of program. The screens around the main one begin to light up, showing file after file. Stella catches only glimpses, at first-- WINTER SOLDIER being a common one, along with DEPARTMENT X and RED ROOM, underneath STRIKE and HYDRA and INSIGHT. Eventually, the screens begin to settle. "Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with it's own freedom." The voice that speaks continues along, monotonous, empty, mechanical, vacant. The images begin to change, matching what Zola speaks of. "What we did not realize is that if you try to take that freedom, they will resist." There's an echo. Stella's eyes narrow at the image of herself on the screen, just a split second of her fist and shield against a Hydra trooper.

"The war taught us much." Zola continues. "Humanity needed to surrender it's freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded, and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew, a beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis. Reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed." The image of the Winter Soldier reveals itself once again, faded newsprint, redacted information, metal arm, metal arm, metal arm.

"That's impossible. SHIELD would've stopped you." Natasha nearly whispers it, her unease palpable. Stella says nothing, her teeth clenched.

"Accidents will happen." HOWARD AND MARIA STARK DIE IN CAR CRASH, proclaims a newspaper dated December of 1991. DECEASED, scrawled over the face of Director Nick Fury. "Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice it's freedom in order to gain it's security. Once the purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise."

"We won, Captain." Zola continues, and a mocking tone creeps into the mechanical nightmare's voice. "Your death amounts to the same as your life." ROGERS DISAPPEARS, screams a paper. THE HERO WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING, roars a magazine cover. "A zero sum."

Before Stella knows what she's doing, she's struck the screen. Her fist goes right through the shattered glass, colliding with wires and mechanics and not the flesh and bone she wants to strike, not the madman who stole her husband, not the bastard responsible for killing him. The shattered screen goes dark, and another beside it flickers into life.

"As I was saying." Monotony. No change. Stella shakes shards of glass from her bloody and healing fist.

"What's on this drive?" The Captain snarls, and Natasha has moved closer to her once again when her hands slam down onto the desk.

"Project Insight requires... insight. So I wrote an algorithm." Zola answers.

"Launched from the Lemurian Star." Nat mutters behind her, and then says, louder, "What sort of algorithm?"

"The answer to your question is fascinating." The computer responds. "Unfortunately, you will be too dead to hear it." Both women turn sharply as the door begins to seal itself, and Stella jumps forward to throw her shield in an attempt to stop it. The attempt is fruitless, and she raises her arm to catch her weapon, stepping forward once.

"Stella, we got a bogey. Ten, fifteen seconds tops." The Widow's voice is shaky. The Captain clenches her teeth again.

"Who fired it?"

"SHIELD."

"Admit it. It's better this way." The mechanical man says as Stella jumps for the grating in the floor. She rips it out of the concrete, grabs Natasha by the arm to pull her in. "We are, both of us, out of time."

The explosion rips through the air just as Stella's curling her body around the smaller woman's, her shield raised over both their heads against the debris and dust and smoke. The effort is excruciating, and she holds Natasha tighter and tighter to her chest, snarling with the effort it takes to keep it up against the wreck and flames.

When everything is said and done, Stella's coughing, chest heaving with the effort. Her body feels tight, tense, and Natasha is unconscious, the woman's head lolling against her shoulder. The Captain hoists her up as best she can one-armed, pulling Nat against her chest and supporting her carefully. She stumbles through the wreckage, shouldering aside a block of concrete until they make it back into the clean, open air. Breathing evenly now, Stella looks up immediately at the sound of Quinjet engines. The blue light that she knows to be surveying equipment greets her, and she holds the redhead tighter to her, immediately trudging in the opposite direction. Scouting teams, she knows. They'll be after them to confirm the kill. No time to waste. Her blue eyes shift down to the woman in her arms, and she exhales slowly, achingly glad that the Widow is still breathing.

___________________________________________________________

Stumbling their way to Sam's is easier than Stella expected it to be. She found a place to hide until Natasha had rejoined the land of the living, and a quick dash to the truck and what Stella assumed would be up to six speeding tickets if they'd been found by a police officer later, they'd found Sam Wilson's address and dragged themselves to his backdoor.

Stella knocks and isn't surprised in the least to be greeted by a sharp squeal of her daughter's voice from somewhere in the house. After the tense conversation earlier this morning and the lack of sleep, she's halfway relieved just to know that Joanna's safe. Nat leans halfway on her, both of them covered in dust and grime. She feels a small amount of pity for the redhead; Natasha is, after all, only human, and it's a wonder she's made it this far. Stella nudges her slightly, helping her stand a bit upright.

Sam's expression is somewhere between surprise and bewilderment as he opens the door.

"Sorry about this." Stella manages. "But we need a place to lie low."

"Everyone we know is trying to kill us." Natasha adds, and Sam frowns before stepping aside to let the both of them in.

"Not everyone." He says with a bit of a reassuring look, glancing over their shoulders in both directions as Stella and Natasha shuffle past him and inside. He's kind enough to direct them to the shower and the washing machine for their clothing, and Stella's just about to tell Natasha she can go first before something small and loud comes barreling into her legs.

"Mama!" Joanna's wail is heartbreaking and Stella stumbles back slightly, a bit startled at just how easy it was for the kid to throw herself at her. The Captain kneels and gathers the child up into her arms, holding onto her tightly. Joanna's noises are somewhere between distraught and ecstatic, and Stella says nothing, only moving to sit down properly on the floor and have her daughter in her lap.

"Hey, baby girl." She manages, mustering a smile as she gently pulls Joanna's head back to look at her. One hand lifts to wipe the tears away from the little girl's cheek. "I missed you. Were you having fun with Sam?"

"Missed you too. Were you playing in the garden?" Joanna questions, her sadness forgotten abruptly and her tiny little hands wiping at the dirt on Stella's cheek. Sam and Natasha have both left the room by now- likely to give her privacy.

"No, I wasn't playing in the garden. I got dirty 'cause bad people were throwing things at me and Tasha." She says, still with that weak smile, and Joanna's theatrical gasp almost makes her laugh. It's a relief, a god damn miracle, and the knot in her chest that had been tightening since they discovered Zola is very gradually unravelling. Stella wraps her arms around the little girl and holds her close, closing her eyes and allowing herself to relax, if only for a moment. They sit in silence for a time, Joanna's tiny hands fisting in her dirty coat and holding on like she expects her mother to up and vanish again. The woman closes her eyes, her hand going to the back of the child's head, and she gives a slow sigh.

"I'm sorry, baby." She murmurs, tilting her head to put her mouth against Joanna's forehead. One of the girl's tiny hands go to her loose braid, small fingers gently pulling her hair free from it's ties. "I'm sorry."

Joanna doesn't answer, but the small girl curls into her that much tighter.

___________________________________________________________

The shower's a relief, and may just be one of the best showers she's taken in her life. Wiping the grime and gunk away from her body makes her feel a little less run down, and the warm water does a good job of making her more awake. Sam doesn't own a hairbrush, so she takes to combing her hair out with her fingers, working out knots as best she can without pulling out chunks of her hair in the process. She pulls her now-cleaned shirt back on, looking back into the mirror. Natasha is visible in it, sitting on the bed with her head bowed, her hair still damp and curling slightly around the tips. Stella glances from the mirror to the real deal, frowns for just a moment, pushes her hair back with one hand, and steps out of the bathroom.

"Hey." She says, gently, and Natasha looks up as Stella takes a seat opposite her. "What's going on?"

Natasha's expression is blank, but there's something present in her eyes that makes Stella worry for her. The Captain sits slightly forward, her hands threaded together in her lap. The Widow sighs.

"When I joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight. I thought I was fixing all those mistakes I'd made." She looks down at her own slender fingers, and Stella watches her face. Natasha clenches her jaw for just a moment. "Turns out I just traded in all that for Hydra." There's something in her voice, something in her eyes, some sort of sadness or hatred that Stella can't identify, but it's clear she's struggling. The Captain takes this opportunity to reach forward, delicately taking the Widow's hand in what she hopes is reassuring. For a moment, Natasha doesn't reciprocate, but she relents regardless, curling her fingers delicately through Stella's.

"Thanks for that." She mumbles, and Stella raises her brows.

"It wasn't anything, Natasha." She responds, and Natasha looks back to the other woman's face.

"No, it was. You be honest-- If it were the other way around, and it were down to me to save your life, would you trust me to do it?" Natasha's grip on her hand is feather-light, wary. It reminds Stella of something skittish and frightened, not the powerful weapon of a woman she knows the Black Widow to be. She can feel those light green eyes boring into her, seeking, searching. Desperate.

"I would now." Stella anwers, without skipping a beat. She squeezes Natasha's hand. "And I'm always honest." A soft smile curls the Captain's lips. The sorrow in the redhead's face only seems to worsen, but Stella feels both of Natasha's hands curling around hers in a slow motion. Natasha squeezes in return, before she pulls both her hands away and sits back.

"You seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing."

"Well." Stella sits back in the chair with a bit of a weak laugh. The knot that had unravelled in Joanna's presence begins to creep it's way back into her chest, tightening around her heart. "Guess I just like to know who I'm fighting." They're interrupted by a knock at the door before Natasha can answer, and both women look to see Sam peeking in like he expects something to explode.

"I made breakfast." He says, after clearing his throat. "If you guys... eat that sort of thing." He retreats with a happy little squeal coming from the other side of the house, where the kitchen is, and Stella chuckles lightly as she stands up. She waits for Natasha, and the two of them walk together to the table.

Breakfast passes in silence aside from the occasional compliment of Sam's cooking and a declaration of what her toys were doing from Joanna. When it's all finished with, Joanna's sent to the living room to play and the trio of adults get to scheming.

"Who at SHIELD has the power to launch a domestic missile strike, then?" Stella says as she sits back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other and crossing her arms over her chest.

"Alexander Pierce. Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world." Natasha answers, and Stella makes a face.

"He can't be working alone. Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star, and he sure wasn't." Stella looks down to the empty plate in front of her, brows furrowed in thought.

"So was Jasper Sitwell." Natasha says, slowly, and the Captain glances up to her. It doesn't take long to process it- Sitwell was the only man on the Lemurian Star who wasn't some sort of tech. A cynical laugh leaves her lips, and she shakes her head.

"So! How do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD agent in broad daylight?" She says, bitingly sarcastic, and there's a twitch of a smile on Natasha's face. Sam has vanished momentarily, and when he comes back, he's holding a file folder in both hands, like it's something delicate.

"The answer is," says Sam Wilson, "You don't." He drops the file folder onto the table in front of Stella, and Natasha comes over to look. There's a photograph stapled to the front of it, Sam beside someone, another man- this one blonde- who grins at him over his shoulder.

"Who's this?" Stella questions as she looks back up to Sam, and she recognizes the slight slump in his shoulders. The slight tense of his jaw.

"Riley." Sam answers. "My wingman." Stella feels sympathy, all of a sudden. Sam Wilson is a kindred spirit. She gives him an apologetic look, and Sam shakes his head, gesturing back to the file. The Captain opens it up, looking down at the diagrams and the photographs and the designs as she stands up. Page after page of-- well.

"Pararescue." She says. "I thought you were a pilot."

Now, Sam all but smirks.

"I never said pilot." He replies, tilting his head towards her. Natasha's expression has become one of clear amusement.

"I can't ask you to do this, Sam." Stella says, slowly, feeling a bit like she's surrounded by excited children. "You got out for a good reason."

"Dude." Sam cuts off anything else she might say. "Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in."

Stella feels herself blushing, just slightly.

"Where do we get one of these?" She questions, dropping the file and closing it. She gives the picture on the front another small glance, then back to the living room where her daughter seems to be playing with a dinosaur.

"The last one is at Fort Meade." Sam grumbles with a sigh. "Behind three guarded gates and a twelve inch steel wall."

Stella and Natasha exchange a glance, and Nat simply shrugs with a dismissive gesture. Stella feels herself grinning as she looks back to Sam.

"Shouldn't be a problem." She says, stepping around the table. "Natasha and I will take care of it. We'll meet you back here-- I need you to take Joanna somewhere safe for me, if you're coming with us. There's a nursing home a few miles away from here, you'll want to ask for Peggy Carter..."

___________________________________________________________

Stealing the wings is laughably easy, and a good way for both of them to find their groove again. They slip in and out around the security system in a grand total of five minutes, and even have time to pick up a coffee before Sam returns from dropping Joanna off at the retirement home. They meet him at his car, and it's a quick jaunt downtown before they find Sitwell at his lunch meeting.

The plan was a simple one, really. Sam was far less conspicuous than both of them were, disguises or not. Nat had kept most of her gadgets on her person, which meant it was a simple matter of temporarily changing the ID on Sam's phone to read Alexander Pierce, and they'd planned to approach a building about two blocks away for the interrogation. Or rather, the roof of the building.

Stella and Natasha position themselves on a building opposite the hotel where the lunch meeting had taken place. There's a slight spat over who gets to make use of the laser pointer before Natasha wins simply by pressing the button at the right time despite Stella's protests of being the better shot. They watch as Sam walks after Sitwell, share a glance, and Natasha tucks the laser pointer into Stella's pocket at her hip. They walk together through side streets to make it to the roof, and they meet Sitwell in the stairwell. Stella grabs him by the throat and unceremoniously drags the sputtering man up the rest of the stairs, shoving him out onto the roof with an audible snarl.

"Tell me about Zola's algorithm." She snaps, approaching him as he pulls himself up off the ground. Natasha is positioned slightly behind her.

"Never heard of it." Sitwell stammers back, stumbling as he regains his footing and continuously moving backwards.

"What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?" Stella tries again, eyes narrowing.

"Throwing up. I get seasick." He gives an awkward laugh, and eventually, the both of them run out of roof. Sitwell flails just slightly as he very nearly falls off the roof, and Stella does him the courtesy of grabbing him by his jacket and dragging him upright in a way that leaves the agent with his toes just barely on the roof. Nonetheless, Sitwell gives her a smirk. "Is this little stunt meant to insinuate that you're going to throw me off the roof? Cause that's really not your style, Rogers."

Stella pauses.

She smiles, her brilliant showgirl smile, and puts him right back down on his feet.

"My name's Barnes, actually. And you're right. It's not." She dusts off his jacket, stepping back just slightly. "It's hers." She steps aside.

Natasha Romanoff takes two steps forward and kicks Sitwell hard enough in the chest to send him reeling over the edge, and she and Stella both peek over the edge as he all but howls his terror.

"You know," Nat starts, "Your files were changed to Barnes after you told Jarvis. It's a wonder they're still calling you that."

"Speaking from experience, Hydra tends to need to have it drilled into them." Stella snorts, glancing to the redhead again with a small smile. "Or rather, threatened into them, in this case." There's a rush of wind as Sam makes his appearance, holding the flailing Sitwell by the back of his coat. The man is dropped unceremoniously onto the ground, Sam landing behind him as Stella and Natasha both pace towards him predatorily.

"Zola's algorithm-- it's a program!" He gasps out, pushing himself up and raising both hands defensively.

"We know that." Stella remarks, glancing at Natasha. "Up for another kick?" Sitwell all but whimpers.

"It's- it's made to find threats to Hydra." His voice quivers and he refuses to make eye contact with either of them. "By- by analyzing people's history, it determines if they'll ever be a danger, now or in the future." He manages to pick himself up off the ground. "By- phone calls, emails, SAT scores, voting patterns everything. It- it picks out the threats, targets them." Stella feels her blood run cold, her hands curling delicately into fists.

"And then what?" She questions, eyes narrowing. Sitwell looks down, nearly trembling.

"Oh, god, Pierce is going to kill me..." He whispers, panicked.

"I said, what then?" Stella snarls, and Sitwell startles, looking at her similar to a deer in headlights.

"And then- And then the Insight helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time." He evens out his voice. Stella feels her palms growing bloody from where her nails dig into her skin, and she exchanges a glance with Sam and Natasha before her cold eyes look right to Sitwell.

"Thanks for that. Now. Let's get moving." She glances to Sam, and he nods in response, grabbing Sitwell by the back of his coat once again and jumping from the rooftop towards where the vehicle is parked, the agent wailing all the way.

Stella and Natasha take the stairs two at a time to meet him at the silver car, Natasha sliding into the back seat with Sitwell when Stella takes the passenger seat next to Sam. He starts the car, and there's the sound of Natasha fidgeting with her phone in the back seat when Sam pulls out into traffic.

"Insight's launching in sixteen hours, we're cutting it a little close." The Widow leans forward to talk to the Captain as they're pulling onto the freeway. Stella nudges the shield in the front seat, resting against her knees, and furrows her brows. "Got a plan, Cap?"

"Hydra doesn't like leaks." Sitwell stammers, and Stella resists the urge to roll her eyes. Sam beats her to it with a sharp, "Then why don't you try stickin' a cork in it?" and Stella glances back to the duo in the backseat before looking forward again.

"We'll use him to bypass the DNA scanners and access the Helicarriers directly." The Captain responds, running her thumb over her shield. "From there, it's go to the bridge and shut down all launch codes, or else find a way to sabotage it enough that it'll give us more time to find a real way to take it down."

"That is-- That is a terrible, terrible--" Sitwell chokes out, and is interrupted by a thud on the roof of the car and the sound of shattering glass as something grabs him by the throat and throws him harshly into oncoming traffic. Sam slams his foot down on the brake and the car comes screeching to a halt, throwing the intruder off and sending him flipping forward in front of them.

Time seems to slow to her once again as Stella watches the Winter Soldier pick himself up off of the street, shaking pulverized concrete off of his metal arm and standing straight. He wears a full mask this time, goggles covering those dark dead void empty eyes, and Stella feels her heart racing as the thing called the Winter Soldier raises a gun towards them.

"Hold on!" Stella snaps as Natasha pulls herself onto her lap, grabbing Sam and dragging him over top the two of them. Forcing her shield against the car door, she breaks it with a sharp grunt just as the explosion rips through the car and sends the three of them all sliding down the street. The other vehicles have arrived by now, other equipped Hydra agents playing back-up for the Soldier. Stella picks herself up off the ground, standing straight with her shield raised protectively over her middle-- Natasha's made it away, headed over the other side of the bridge, and Sam's made it behind another wrecked car. The sound of another cocked gun--

It comes quick enough for Stella to raise her shield, deflecting the explosion and throwing her backwards into crushing one car and going careening directly into an oncoming bus. The sound of shattered glass, the screeching of tires, the screams of other passengers, it all rings in her ears as the bus comes to a screaming halt just in time to be hit by another vehicle and flip right onto it's side. There the Captain lays, immobilized and startled, her ears ringing, her heart and head pounding as she clenches her jaw. Move, she tells herself. Move. Move, damn you.

When her vision comes back together and she manages to pick herself up off the ground, it's to the abrupt sound of gunfire too close by to be a good thing. Adrenaline kicks in and the Captain hoists herself up, ducking and dodging and diving until she can throw herself out the back of the bus and pick up her shield again. Hiding herself behind it, she allows herself a quick glance. Four men. Observe, plan, execute. One on top of a crushed vehicle with something undoubtedly illegal in this state, the rest with simple rifles. All shooting at her. Some of the bullets flatten and fall hot against her feet, the rest ricochet off-- Ricochet. Observe, plan, execute.

Stella stands her ground, planting her feet firmly on the concrete and stepping forward. She angles her shield once and twice and three times, knocking out all but the last man on top of the vehicle with quick motions. They meet their end by their own bullets, and Stella jumps forward to slam her shield directly into the nose of the man with the largest gun. He drops like a rock, and she drops her shield onto the gun to slice the heated barrel in half with a scowl. There's the sound of another gunshot from above and someone behind her falls flat as she looks up.

"Go!" Sam says sharply down to her. "I got this!" There's the sound of fighting down a side street, and Stella raises her shield quickly, diving in the direction of a voice she knows to be Natasha's. The Winter Soldier is nowhere to be found- but then, Natasha was a target too. She can guess the Widow was leading him away on a chase.

There's another gunshot, the audible sound of metal through flesh, and a gasping cry in Natasha's voice. It comes into view seconds later, Stella nearly seeing red at the sight of her friend peeking over the hood of a car, slumped slightly forward, and the Soldier aiming his rifle directly at her head.

The Captain throws herself forward shield first, and the Soldier sees her just in time to drop his weapon and drive his fist directly into her shield with an audible clang. It's like a bell in the street, and she's glad that punch wasn't aimed at her face.

Right. Got his attention. Stella jumps back quickly before the Soldier can grab onto her, but the same can't be said for her shield. His metal hand closes around it (charred near the elbow, Natasha's doing?) and his flesh fist collides with her jaw, having her lean back as he twists her weapon around. She twists with it, her arm forced out of the strap, and as she picks herself back up from the roll she's met with the sight of the Winter Soldier staring her down, her own shield raised in front of him.

He isn't wearing any goggles anymore. The light does something to his eyes. Something-- something. Void eyes, empty eyes, dark eyes.

The shield is thrown when Stella's jumping to her feet and she ducks to the side, hearing it collide with a van a distance behind her as she all but throws herself to the mechanical creature looming in front of her. She's countered with a knife, blocking strike after strike as he tries to drive another of his weapons through her skull. He's skilled, though-- the Soldier forces her backwards steadily as they exchange strikes and Stella stands her ground up until he's got her pinned against the same van her shield was lodged in. She ducks just a few seconds too late, the knife shearing through her ponytail and loosening her hair around her shoulders. The sound of his knife against the metal of the van is a sickening noise, and Stella drives her knee into his stomach to force him backwards long enough for her to grab hold of her shield.

He's like a storm, relentless, a monster, cold and dark. He follows her as she's leaping over a car, and she rolls quick enough out of the way to avoid a punch from that metal arm that shatters the concrete beside her head. Stella snarls as she gets to her feet once more, throwing blow after blow at him, blocking with her shield as much as she can and avoiding at whatever chance she gets. Eventually she's grabbed hold of him, thrusting her shield between the plates in his metal arm hard enough for her to see sparks coming from the newly-created wound. She forces him into a position with his back against her, the shield still lodged in his arm, her hand going to his face with the intention of taking him down there and then--

The mask catches on her fingertips.

She feels it as he throws her back, feels the mask break free from his skin and come loose, feels it against her fingers for seconds longer as she's sliding backwards, hears him prevent himself from falling as she straightens up.

He stands.

He turns.

Her world, suddenly, becomes very small.

The Soldier stands there, those dark and empty eyes looking at her with no recognition. But her husband stands there too, the scruff on his jaw betraying the fact that he hasn't shaved for a time. His hair is too long, framing his face in a way that she would call handsome, and his eyes are deeply darkly green, void and full and empty and bright and dark and cold and warm warm warm. Her green eyed glory. She sees it in his posture, in the way he stands. In the furrow of his brows, the tension in his shoulders. Combat. She sees it now, flashes of his fingers on his gun, flashes of his eyes, his eyes, his eyes. She forgets, for a moment, how to breathe.

"Bucky?" Stella's voice is a whisper, a heartbreak, a panic.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" James Buchanan Barnes growls in return, raising his pistol towards her without so much of a shift in position. Numbness settles into her bones, the panic, her feet are leaden, her heart is pounding in her ears, her blood's gone cold. She tries to open her mouth, tries to say something more--

Sam comes careening into Bucky from behind, knocking him forward. Stella remains rooted to the spot, a sickness boiling away in her stomach, an agony settling like a weight on her shoulders. By the time Bucky stands, Natasha's launched another explosive at him, and he vanishes like the rising smoke by the time Stella can manage to turn and look again. Bucky. Bucky. Bucky. He's alive.

Bucky Barnes is alive.

Three vehicles surround her. She hears them distantly, Rumlow's roar at her. The shield fell from her grasp already, dropping to the ground with another audible clang. Bucky Barnes is alive. On your knees, they say, and Stella can't move. She can't. He's alive. He's alive. Someone kicks her in the back of the knee and Stella catches herself from falling, sinking down onto her knees with her head bowed forward, numbness and guilt and agony all worming their way into her bones. Her ears ring. A gun presses itself to the back of her head, and she stares at the concrete in front of her. He's alive. He's alive.

Her husband is alive.

Not here, says someone above her, and the gun is lowered. She feels them closing cuffs around her wrists, she feels them dragging her upwards. All of it seems very far away, now. His face is burned into her eyes, his voice is tattooed into her ears, her heart aches with the feel of it. He is alive. Bucky Barnes is alive. Her husband is alive.

Who the hell is Bucky?

___________________________________________________________

  
"It was him." Stella mumbles, staring down at her hands. They'd secured her into the vehicle damn well; cuffs around her wrists and ankles, and a bar around her midsection that keeps her secured against the van's wall. "He looked right at me. Like he didn't even know me..." No recognition, not an ounce. Nothing in those dark empty eyes she loved so much. Her heart and stomach twist all at once, and she swallows thickly.

"How is that even possible? It was like seventy years ago." Sam is still running on pure adrenaline, she knows, and she's glad he's not hurt.

"Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43." Stella manages, looking up finally, her eyes resting on nothing in particular. "Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did must've helped Bucky survive the fall." She trails off and lowers her eyes once again. She imagines wind whistling around her head, imagines seeing him reaching for her. "They must've... found him, and..."

"None of that's your fault, Stella." Natasha's voice is a slur, the woman's eyes half closed, her head lolling against the back of the van. Blood drips from her leather coat, a hole in her shoulder. She's wounded, the tang of blood in the air only making Stella feel that much more tense.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky." Stella says, quiet as she can, before lapsing into total silence. She thinks of Joanna, safe with Peggy, and she thinks of Bucky, god knows where now. Bucky, a prisoner of Hydra. Bucky, a living weapon. The man she knew never wanted to go to war, turned into something to fight against everything he cared about. Her eyes burn, and she almost misses it when Sam demands a doctor for Natasha.

She looks up again at the loud sound of someone's foot crashing into someone else's face, in time to see the expression that appears Sam is having a bit of a religious experience as Maria Hill pulls off the riot gear mask and looks between the three of them.

"God, that thing was squeezing my brain..." She grumbles, looking at Sam and then at Stella. "Who's this guy?"

Stella and Sam meet eachother's eyes, and Stella stifles a cough.

"Don't you dare," comes a slurred growl from Natasha.

After that, it's a simple matter of getting Stella loose from those thick restraints, breaking through the metal seperating the back of the van from the front, and all but throwing the driver out the back of the vehicle. Hill slides up front and turns the car around without catching the attention of the other three Hydra vans in front of them, and starts driving in a completely different direction. Stella grabs hold of one of the seats in the back to steady herself, glancing at the restraints for a moment and then allowing herself to be swallowed up by thought again, paying no attention to Sam putting pressure on Natasha's wound or Hill's method of deflecting questions.

Her husband's alive. Bucky is not dead, and Bucky's been in the clutches of Hydra for nigh on seventy years. Because she couldn't reach him. Because she didn't go looking for a body, like she should have. Stella looks down to her hands, startled to find herself shaking. Panic and guilt mix into a throb in the back of her head, and her eyes burn. They'd experimented on him, undoubtedly. She remembers how out of it he'd been when she rescued him from that factory, how he'd been unable to do anything but repeat his name and enlistment number until she'd pulled him off the table and shown herself. How confused he'd been. After that-- her husband had been sullen, dull and angry, distant. For weeks. She'd noticed, no matter how much he'd tried to keep it from her.

They'd done something more to him. He didn't recognize her. That feeling is like a punch to the gut, a stab to the heart, a blow to the head. He didn't know who she was. James Buchanan Barnes, her husband, the man she'd known since she was three years old, didn't know who she was.

Her fingertips curl into her palms, hands moving steadily into fists. She couldn't believe that. He did know who she was, he had to. He couldn't just forget her, not after everything they were, not after everything they'd shared. He had to know. He had to.

She doesn't realize when the van comes to a stop until Hill is opening the door, and she gives her companions a cursory glance, not even bothering to say a word. She steps out of the vehicle before Sam and Natasha, giving a little help to the other woman and frowning lightly when Nat refuses to let herself be carried. The four of them walk together to what appears to be some sort of dam maintenance, a river trickling away down a hill from where they walk. It's easy to get inside, and though it's dimly lit, they're met with someone else who claims to be a doctor almost as quickly as they get inside.

"She's lost a pint, maybe two." Hill says, as she hands Natasha over to the man. "You'll have to come with us, though, she'll want to see him first." Stella raises a brow at the other agent, and Hill shakes her head, giving a gesture and starting to lead the way. They move through a series of hallways and locked doors, eventually coming to a room that smells like it's been entirely drowned in antiseptic and disinfectant, that cloying scent that sticks in the back of Stella's throat.

Nick Fury raises his head from the bed, stares at the five of them, and then scowls.

"About damn time."

___________________________________________________________

Hatred and guilt mix strangely, Stella decides as she takes a place beside a pillar while Fury is wheeled to a table. Natasha's been patched up, and the lie has been unfurled- any attempt on the director's life had to look successful. Can't kill you if you're already dead. Stella stares at the floor, her arms crossed, her brows furrowed. Liars. Liars, the lot of them. Liars and-- thieves. She thinks of Bucky, and her chest aches, a deep and painful sting. She listens to the conversations and explanations, but her mind is elsewhere.

"This man declined a peace prize." Fury grumbles, looking down at a black and white photo of Alexander Pierce. "He said peace wasn't a goal, it was a responsibility. See, it's shit like this that gives me trust issues." He looks up, his gaze shifting from Natasha to Stella.

"Funny you didn't notice." Stella says dryly, staring at the opposite wall. "Considering you two were best friends and all. Hydra grew right under your nose, and you didn't give it so much as a glance."

"Why do you think we're hiding in this cave?" Fury responds curtly. "I noticed."

"And how many paid the price before you did?" Stella turns her head to look at him then, her expression blank, her fingertips digging into her forearms. Her posture is tense and tight, agitated, angry. How dare you, she wants to say. Hydra was here. You helped them. How dare you. Fury lowers his gaze from her, glancing to the pale redhead to his left for a moment.

"Look," he starts. "I didn't know about Barnes."

Stella snorts.

"If you had, would you have told me?" She questions, locking her eyes on him. "Or would you have compartmentalized that, too?" Her tone is cold. Her knuckles are white, putting bruises on her own skin beneath her jacket. "Hydra grew right under your nose, and you noticed too damn late. We're going to fix this, Fury, so unless what you're going to give me next is a plan, don't you dare open your mouth."

The former Director looks a bit shocked to hear her speak that way, but Stella doesn't so much as twitch. It's a challenge, once more. This time, though, Fury doesn't raise himself to her level.

"The Council isn't returning my calls anymore." He mutters, lifting a briefcase onto the table. He turns it around and pulls it open, presenting the five of them with three microchips that Stella recognizes as part of the control panels. "We had these made in case of targeting emergency months ago. This is going to be what we use to take them down."

"We need to get into each of the carriers and replace their targeting chips with these." Hill explains, taking a seat on the other side of Fury. "One or two won't cut it, we have to link all three for it to work. Otherwise..." She laces her fingers together, looking from Fury to Natasha to Sam, and finally to Stella. "Otherwise, a whole lot of people are gonna die."

"We take care of this," Fury continues, "and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage--"

"We're not salvaging anything! We're not just taking down Hydra, we're taking down SHIELD!" Stella snarls at him, all but baring her teeth. She steps forward, her hands fists at her sides. He's injured enough, she tells herself, he doesn't need you hitting him again. "You gave me this mission, and this is how it ends. SHIELD, Hydra, it all goes."

Again, that shocked expression comes to Fury's features. He looks to Hill beside him, looking somewhere between angry and confused.

"She's right." Hill says, quietly. Fury's gaze travels to Natasha, and Natasha only nods, looking back to Stella. When he looks to Sam, the Falcon only raises one hand dismissively.

"Don't look at me." He says. "I do what she does, just slower." Sam looks to Stella, and Stella sets her jaw. Finally, Fury relents.

"Well." He says, sitting back in his chair. "Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain." His one eye settles on Stella's face, and the Captain gives a curt nod. Without waiting for anyone to say anything else, she turns on her heel and steps out of the room, heading down the hallway to the stairs that lead to the top of the dam. There's the sound of someone else's footsteps on concrete, but she ignores them, climbing the stairs.

___________________________________________________________

She arrives into the sunlight and a soft wind, the gentle babbling of the river nearby continuing in it's winding path. Her hair blows in the light breeze and she makes a note to tie it back before she does anything more, bowing her head forward. Stella gives a shaky breath, moving over to the railing. Her fists close around the old metal, and she feels part of it crack under her tense muscles. She closes her eyes, and she thinks.

"We looked for you, after." Bucky's voice is gentle from his place behind her. Stella's vision is blurred with tears, her nose slightly stuffed from how much sniffling she's been doing. Her hands are in her pockets, shoulders hunched forward. "My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery."

She resists the urge to snort. Bucky's mother never liked her, that would only be out of pity.

"I know, Buck, m'sorry." Stella mumbles. It's May of 1938. The heat is still something awful, but Bucky's wearing his finest suit, and Stella had dressed herself in her mother's favorite yellow sundress. It wasn't proper for a funeral, she knows, but her mother had loved to see her in it. It's dirty now, her stockings slightly frayed, flecks of dirt around the ends of the skirt, and her shoes haven't been shiny in years. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, only just pinned back enough to stay out of her face. "I just... wanted to be alone."

She approaches the front door, feeling the ache anew. It's empty, now. She turns eighteen in two months, and the landlord had been fond enough of her mother to simply turn the deed over to her, so long as she could pay rent. She'd have to find a job and fast, she supposes, her eyes burning as her shaking hands dig into the pocket her mother had sewn into the side of the dress.

"I was gonna ask," Bucky starts.

"I know what you're gonna say, Buck." Stella mutters. The key isn't in her pocket. She kneels automatically to check her shoe.

"It'd be like when we were kids. I can put the couch cushions on the floor. It'll be fun." He tries to keep his tone light. "All you'll have to do is take out the trash, maybe shine my shoes." He steps back some as she picks herself up off the floor from digging in both of her shoes, doing her the favor of not staring at her sagging stockings as he kicks over the cinderblock and kneels to pick up the spare key. "C'mon." He holds it out to her. Stella feels, for a moment, like she might start crying again as she takes the key.

"Thank you, Buck." She says, doing her best to strengthen her voice. She straightens her posture, forces herself to stand taller. Forces herself to look him in the eye. Blinks away tears. "But I can get by on my own."

"The thing is..." Her green eyed glory sighs, and reaches forward to put his hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to." He offers her a smile, a gentle smile. "I'm with you to the end of the line, pal."

She can't stop herself.

Stella takes that single step forward to close the distance between them, and Bucky wastes no time in wrapping his arms around her. He's strong and steady, and she needs that. She needs him to be there, she knows, and now she halfway regrets going to the cemetery alone. Stella buries her face into his chest, Bucky's hand going to the back of her head. His fingers delicately curl around golden strands as she begins to weep again in earnest, shaky sobs leaving her and making her whole body tremble.

"I'm not going anywhere." Bucky whispers, pressing his lips to the top of her head. "I'm right here, Stella, I'm never leaving you."

"He's gonna be there, you know." Sam's voice breaks her from her reverie, and Stella is pulled away from Brooklyn to be placed once again on the top of the old dam. He stays a respectful distance away from her, watching her with an expression of worry. She's glad not to see pity there as she lifts her hand, wiping her eyes.

"I know." She mumbles, looking down to the fallen leaves and cracking concrete.

"Look..." Sam sighs softly, taking a step nearer to her. He doesn't touch her, or try to get into her line of vision. "Whoever he is now, and whoever he used to be, I don't think they're the same person. He's not the kind you save, he's the kind you stop. He doesn't know you, Stella."

"He will." Stella says, looking up to him finally. She clenches her jaw, meeting Sam's eyes with a hard expression. There is only one way this ends, she knows. She'll finish her mission. She'll take the carriers down. And then-- and then she'll be with Bucky again, one way or another. "Suit up." She says, turning her back on Sam and striding down the lenght of the dam. "It's time."

"You're gonna wear that?" He calls after her, carefully. Stella looks over her shoulder.

"No. If you're gonna fight a war, you've gotta wear a uniform." She gives him a slight nod, then looks forward again, digging in her pocket for her phone.

___________________________________________________________

"Hi, baby girl."

"Mama!"

"I found your daddy, Jo-ann. I'm gonna bring him home, okay?"

"Dada's coming home?"

"Yeah- Yeah, baby girl, he is. When I come to get you, he'll be with me. You stay with Peggy, alright? Peggy and her family will look after you until we get home."

"Love you, Mama."

"I love you too. Be a good girl, alright?"

"I will."

"Bye-bye, baby. I'll see you soon."

___________________________________________________________

This isn't her real uniform, she knows. Her real uniform was cut off of her when she was taken out of the ice, the frost-ruined shreds of it undoubtedly to be found somewhere in some SHIELD headquarters. This one is a replica. A replica that doesn't fit right in the places it should, and not necessarily combat ready, but it's the one that she knows Bucky would know, more than her tactical gear. More than the showgirl outfit Coulson had put her in for New York. Some part of her feels like she's slipped into something much more familiar; wearing her warpaint again, she feels more whole than she has in a long time.

There's one goal in all of this. One goal. Save lives. Specifically, save the life of her husband. Bucky Barnes is alive.

Stella leads the march inside, her shield at her side, a gun at her hip and a knife in her belt. Protection, she knows, but not protection she's sure she's going to want to use. The Captain gives Sam and Maria a glance as they approach the room that controls the Triskelion's systems, stopping a short way from the door. Natasha is disguised and on her way to more or less beat Pierce's face in in the process of her info dump, and Fury's on helicopter duty. Stella gives a sharp exhale.

"We can't waste any time." She says, quickly. "Sam, you've got to go quick when you're putting those chips in. The message might not guarantee anything- for all we know, a lot more of the people here are Hydra than they are really SHIELD. Don't stay on me, alright? I'm going to be a big target, I'd rather you stayed out of that." I'm going to do something stupid. I can't let you try to stop me.

"Gotcha." Sam answers, examining her face for a moment. Stella adjusts her grip on her shield.

"Hill, you have to stay on your toes. We're going to take care of this, but if- god forbid- Natasha needs help, you have to let us know. Sam can get there faster than I can. I doubt she'll need it, but be ready."

"Sir yes sir." Maria responds, with a twitch of a smile. Stella looks between them again, then gestures to the door. Sam lifts a pistol from his holster, Hill following his example. Stella approaches the door first, climbing the last of the stairs and knocking politely on what she knows is the service door to the satellite. A tech answers, of course, and when confronted with two guns in his face has the right idea of raising his hands and nudging them both inside.

Subduing the rest of the techs is more a matter of telling them to get out and go home. Most of them are all too eager to leave, and the few who put up a fight barely know how to block a punch. The three of them are left alone in the radio rooms, Hill taking her seat at the console to hook herself into the Triskelion's systems. She gestures to the microphone at the front of the room for a moment, and Stella clears her throat, looking back to Sam and Maria as she steps forward.

She puts her shield on her back. Bracing her hands on the sides of the desk, Stella closes her eyes, breathes once, and speaks.

"Attention all SHIELD agents." She says. She hears her own voice echoing over the PA system, and knows that everyone present has just stopped in their tracks. "This is Stella Barnes. You've heard a lot about me over the past few days. Some of you have even been ordered to hunt me down." Her fingers curl against the desk. She adjusts, shifting her weight. "I think it's time you know the truth."

"SHIELD is not what we thought it was." She continues, fixing her eyes on a place on the wall. I'm so sorry, she wants to say. I'm asking you to do so much for me. "It's been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader." She clenches her jaw, keeping her eyes open, fixated on the spot on the concrete wall. "The STRIKE and Insight crew are Hydra, and I don't know how many more. But I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you." Men who killed for her. Men who fought with her. Men who nearly put a knife in her back. She thinks of Rumlow, and her heart aches with anger and pity together.

"They almost have what they want- absolute control. You launch those ships today, and Hydra will be able to kill anyone who stands in their way. They shot Nick Fury." She looks down. They took my husband from me. "It's not going to end there. Unless we stop them."

"I know I'm asking a lot." She closes her eyes. "The price of freedom is high. Always has been. But it's a price I'm willing to pay." Stella opens her eyes again, looking down to the console. The Triskelion is dead silent, besides the sound of her voice. I'm asking you to die. To die for me. "And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not." She pauses, steps back. Shifts her weight. Stands straight.

"Did you write that down first?" Sam questions from somewhere behind her. "Or was it off the top of your head?" He offers her a grin, and Stella shrugs in response.

"Let's go." She says. "We can't waste time, we've gotta move fast." Sam nods in response, and they both give Maria Hill a bit of a salute before turning on their heels and dashing out towards where the Helicarriers are whirring their way to life.

"Hey Cap!" Sam yells when they make it out into the open air. "How do we know the good guys from the bad guys?" Stella snorts in response.

"If they're shooting at you, they're bad!"

Observe. Plan. Execute.

She throws herself onto the bridge of one of the carriers before it comes out of the ground. Her feet hit the concrete hard and she hears the whoosh of Sam picking himself up into the air with those mechanical wings of his. Dodging bullets, striking grenades, smashing in noses. Observe, plan, execute. Her mind is elsewhere, her mind is on the knowledge that she may be running and fighting her way to her death. Not until the mission's done, she reminds herself. If the carriers aren't down, you don't go down. No matter what. Hill's voice in an earpiece reminds her of the time they've got- sixteen minutes. Observe, plan, execute.

Stella fights her way down to the first console, the carriers rising steadily into the air. They're big and hulky and slow, and Stella has never been more glad that Stark technology is running these hunks of concrete and metal. Her heart is pounding in her chest, shrapnel decorates her uniform, her shield is stained with gunpowder, and she has never felt more goddamn alive.

"Alpha lock." She says into her earpiece as the first chip is put into place. Getting out is much easier than getting in, and she does the Hydra agents a favor of doing her best not to step on any of those knocked out while she's climbing the stairs. Sam's declaration of 'Bravo lock' seconds later is a relief. Two down, one to go.

"Hey, Sam?" She says, dashing towards the edge of the carrier. "M'gonna need a ride."

"Let me know when, Cap!" Sam yells over the wind, and Stella feels herself grinning as her feet meet open air. Adrenaline and anxiety must be some sort of drug, she decides.

"Just did!" She all but cackles in response. Observe, plan, execute. She may be walking to her death. People are dying for her. But her husband is alive, she has a chance, and she knows what she's got to do. Sam's hand closes around hers with an agonized roar and she laughs as he pulls her toward the final ship. They land together, Sam halfway wheezing as they begin the quick walk to the final console.

"You know, you're a lot heavier than you look." He grumbles, and Stella rolls her eyes.

She's about to reply, when something dark and strong comes barrelling into her feet first.

The Winter Soldier's strike sends her sliding directly off the side of the Helicarrier. She hears Sam's yell of her name as her finger scrabble for purchase, only just managing to get a grip on the edge of what she assumes is for the purpose of engine exhaust. Stella holds on tightly, her fingers denting the metal, grinding her teeth. Suddenly, all exhiliration and excitement fades, trickling out of her body with each and every exhale. There's your reason, a little voice tells her. You fight for your green eyed glory, and the little flower that grew out of your graveyard.

"Stella!" When she comes back to herself, Sam is yelling in her ear. "Stella, come on, come in!"

"I'm here." She answers quickly, pulling herself up. "I'm still on the Helicarrier, where are you?"

"Grounded. Suit's down. Sorry, Cap."

So, no backup. She tries not to be relieved as she pulls herself back up onto the concrete.

"Don't worry. I got it."

___________________________________________________________

The console room echoes with the sound of gunfire, her feet on the metal grating, her heart pounding in her throat. Finish the mission. Execute. Execute. Execute. Finish the mission, finish the mission, finish the mission.

He's standing there when she comes to a stop. No mask, now, and she can see his face. His eyes are so dark, so empty, so void. She remembers the little boy he fell in love with. Remembers the way his nose scrunched up when he smiled, remembers the weight of his hand on her shoulder. I'm with you to the end of the line, pal.

I'm not going anywhere.

"A lot of people are gonna die, Buck. I can't let that happen." Stella says, quietly. Bucky stares her down, unblinkingly. The metal arm whirs softly. She swallows the lump in her throat, staring at him in response. She remembers the time he sang to her when she was sick, remembers the jokes he'd use to get her to laugh when she was miserable.

She remembers how he held her when all that grief was fresh. She remembers his body curled protectively around her. She remembers what their dream was, home and family. She remembers the house he described to her, the children he dreamed of. Remembers him. Who he was. Who he is. Who he has to be.

"Please don't make me do this." It's a plea, a beg, a desperate and frightened child reaching out to the dark as if it would respond.

The Winter Soldier is dead silent.

Stella sets her jaw. Adjusts her grip on her shield.

He comes at her with a knife first, Stella blocking it by knocking him back against the railing. Her shield collides with his metal arm more than once, and there's commotion in her earpiece of Hill telling her how much time they've got. She can't waste time, but she's nothing but lost time. The knife is driven into her shoulder and Stella snarls, her fist colliding with the Soldier's face to knock him hard against the console. When he's picking himself up off the ground, Stella is quick about activating the console so the chips are lowered.

She remembers him teaching her how to throw a punch that wouldn't risk breaking her own thumb. She remembers him pulling her away from a bully that broke her nose, then throwing himself in at the bastard to break his in return. She remembers being patched up and lectured together, and remembers the bloody kisses.

When she's scrambling at her belt for the targeting chip, the Soldier has recovered enough to pull a gun. She blocks the bullets with her shield, and as he comes closer he knocks the chip from her grip. Stella curses, looks to him quickly, and then vaults herself over the railing to slide down for it. The Soldier kicks her out of the way at the last minute, grabbing it himself and landing on the glass with a dull thud. She looks down at him from her place just under the console, clenches her jaw, and slides down after him.

She remembers sneaking out at night to watch the stars with him. Remembers climbing the fire escape to the roof on her birthday to watch the fireworks. She remembers the day he knelt before her to ask her to marry him. She remembers walking down the aisle and how tightly she held his hands, and how terrified she was to ever let go.

The Captain makes it down to the glass, throwing her shield at the Soldier. He deflects it with his arm and it goes spiraling elsewhere, though she makes no effort to grab it in return. It wouldn't do her any good at this point. Stella throws herself at him, driving her fist into his stomach hard enough to get him to double over before she jumps onto his back and forces him to the ground. She wraps her arm around his throat tightly, pressing down on his air supply just enough to cut it off. Still he fights her, still he squirms, and she has to pin his metal arm down beneath her leg to prevent him from prying her fingers away.

Two minutes, says Hill in her ear, and Stella feels her eyes sting as she picks the chip up from it's place on the glass and hurries to climb back up to the console. She's just barely made it halfway up when a bullet rips through her thigh, and she clenches her jaw to prevent herself from crying out, looking over her shoulder. The Soldier looks dazed, but not down, and she can't risk fighting him any longer. Now, though, she's an easy target. Another bullet goes through her forearm, and she clenches her jaw, pulling herself up despite the pain.

She stumbles to the console, Hill's voice growing more and more anxious as she says there's only one minute left. Sixty seconds. Stella's hand shakes as she pulls the targeting chip out of the console, standing unsteadily on one leg thanks to the bullet currently embedded in her thigh.

Thirty seconds, and she's reaching to replace it. A bullet goes through her abdomen, a shot that would throw anyone else down to the ground in seconds, but she forces herself to stay standing. Twenty seconds. Ten seconds. Her vision is blurring, going dark, her breathing is growing shaky. The right chip is forced into the slot just as she's sinking to the ground.

"Cap, get out of there." Hill's voice is distant in her earpiece. Mission completed. Stella closes her eyes, for just a moment.

"Fire now." She responds. Don't waste any time.

"But Stella--"

"Do it!" She snarls. Don't waste any time. She is nothing but wasted time without him.

The first explosion sends her to the ground, her cheek pressed against the cold and unyielding metal. For a moment, she thinks that dying this way might not be so bad. Bucky died cold and alone, dead in the snow. It's only right that she hurt more, for leaving him like that. She thinks of Joanna, her eyes closed, her hand pressed against the bullet wound in her stomach. Peggy would take care of her. Peggy would be able to find Joanna a place to stay. She's young. She won't remember. Stella feels her body go limp as another explosion shakes the helicarrier, the cracking and groaning of metal. And this time she hears a scream.

Bucky.

Her eyes open. Stella forces herself to stand. Nothing. Nothing but wasted time. Her hands close around the railing. She hoists herself over, the searing pain of the multitude of wounds that decorate her body feeling like agony, but nothing compared to the ache in her chest and head. She drops onto the cracking glass beside her shield, but doesn't bother to grab it. Bucky is screaming, clawing at a chunk of metal that's pinned him down, and Stella pulls herself over to it. It takes too much effort. She feels blood trickling down her abdomen, a bullet gone directly through her midsection, a bullet embedded in her thigh, a torn knife wound in her shoulder. Agony. Agony. Nothing but wasted time.

She manages to pull the beam up enough to let him loose, and Bucky crawls his way out from underneath it. There's a bruise on his cheek that she knows is her fault. He looks at her as she's pulling herself up, his expression one of confusion and fear and anger all in one. Stella reaches up, pulling the helmet off her head. Her braid falls free down her back, and the helmet is thrown to the side. She watches him, pain still crawling it's way through her body, her heart thudding dully in her chest. Emotion on his face. A chance-- a chance--

"I'm not gonna fight you." She says, stumbling with the effort it takes to keep herself steady as another explosion lurches them both to the side. "You're my friend." He stares at her, and for a moment, she pleads.

Bucky roars, and throws himself into her. Stella's sent sprawling flat against the cracking glass, Bucky straddling her. His hands are tight on her shoulders, keeping her down, but Stella remains limp. She won't fight him. She can't. The mission's done.

"You're my mission." He hisses, raising up the metal arm.

The first blow breaks her cheekbone. The pain is nothing, though, and Stella stares up at him even as her eye is swollen shut. The second splits her lip, the third breaks her jawbone, the fourth nearly sends her into blackness. He roars and screams the whole time, fear and agony and confusion and pain.

"Then finish it." Stella whispers, her voice weak. "Cause I'm with you 'til-- the end of the line." Her vision blurs, but in that one clear moment, she sees his face. She sees him again, the man she loves, the confusion and fear warping into guilt and shock.

The grass cracks.

Darkness rushes up to meet her, and Stella greets it like an old friend.

___________________________________________________________

Time passes.

A much shorter time, this time. She wakes up in a hospital. She wakes up with someone else. She wakes up. She wakes up. She wakes up.

___________________________________________________________

There's multiple vans circling the graveyard, she knows. One is police, one is likely media, and someone else that Stella has no doubt is Fury's prowling. Coming to the Brooklyn cemetery hadn't been difficult at all, though the ride had been a bit longer, especially with a child whining at her the entire time. There's a new scar on her cheekbone, and a collection of papers on the Winter Soldier sitting in her passenger seat. They'd done so much to him. So much to him.

Stella sits down on the grass, staring at the gravestone of James Buchanan Barnes. Joanna is in her lap, staring up at her mother with teary eyes. The girl has been crying quite a bit recently, and Stella just doesn't know what to tell her to make it easier on her.

Natasha's footsteps on the grass are quiet, and the Widow takes a long moment of hesitation before she sits down beside Stella. She doesn't reach out to put her hand on the other woman's shoulder, but she does give the teary-eyed Joanna a little smile. Joanna's grip on Stella's coat tightens and the little girl whimpers.

"You're going after him." Natasha says, after the silence has dragged on. Stella doesn't lift her eyes from the gravestone, adjusting her grip on her daughter.

"I've got to. He had the chance, Nat, and he didn't. He's still..." She trails off.

"I know, Stella. I know." Natasha shifts closer then, hesitates a moment longer, then puts her forehead on the Captain's shoulder. The gesture is a surprising one, but not unwelcome, and Stella closes her eyes, resting her head over top of Natasha's. They sit like that, quiet and still, until a bird begins chirping again in the tree overhead.

The Widow moves first, lifting her head from Stella's shoulder. Green eyes meet deep blue, and red lips curl into a small smile. She shifts forward, placing a gentle kiss on the Captain's cheek.

"Just don't go alone." She murmurs against the other woman's skin, and then moves to stand. A little bit louder, she adds, "Come to the tower when you're done here. We want to help you through this, you know."

"I will." Stella looks up at her. Joanna sniffles. "I'll meet you back there."

She watches Natasha leave, feels Joanna gripping onto her even that little bit tighter. She looks back to the worn gravestone that declares James Barnes a brave soldier, a loving husband, a mourned son. Stella fixates her eyes on the dates. 1917 to 1945. She sighs, low and sorrowful, and then looks to the child in her lap.

"I found your daddy, Joanna." She says, softly. "But there's monsters that have him, and you and me are going to go and save him." Joanna whimpers, says nothing. Stella places her lips aganst the girl's forehead. "We're going to go and rescue your daddy, and when he gets home we're going to help him get better.

"Better?" Jo questions, in a teary voice. Stella nods.

"Bad people made him sick, made his head get put on wrong. But it's okay. We're going to help him." Stella says, rubbing her daughter's back up and down. "But we have to find him first. Like hide and seek." Joanna's response is a little hum, uncertain and wary. But she relents, giving her mother a little nod.

Stella stands up, hoisting her daughter up with her. She gives the gravestone one last look.

"To the end of the line." She whispers it as she turns her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are always a joy to see!! i'm currently looking for new rp partners, so if you're interested in that or just wanna yell at me for what i write, you can find [my tumblr right here](http://magpirate.tumblr.com/). thank you for reading, and for sticking around with me long enough to finish it. i really appreciate it and i would never have gotten this far without the people who read my work.


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